3  1822019547546 


)!HEOD(   :;i 
ROOSEVELT 


LIBRARY 

UNIVERSITY  OF 

CAtiro»NiA 
SAN  DIEGO 


Social  Sciences  &  Humanities  Library 

University  of  California,  San  Diego 
Please  Note:  This  item  is  subject  to  recall. 

Date  Due 
APR  2  3  1998 
JUN  0  M  1996 


Cl  39  (2/95) 


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IFORNIA   SAN  o  EG 


£1822 !  01 954 .7546 


, 

STRENUOUS 
EPIGRAMSOF 
THEODOR.E 
ROOSEVELT 

H-M-CALDWELL   CO. 
P  V_B  L  I«S  H  E  R_,  «T 
NEW  YORK.  6"  BOSTON 
,'i  .                                            .r. 

—  i    r 

/ 

I 
• 

^ 
=a  k 

Copyright,   1904 
BY  H.  M.  CALDWELL  Co. 


Theodore  Roosevelt  was  born  in  New 
York  City,  October  27,  1858.  On  his 
father's  side  he  is  from  Dutch  emigrant 
stock,  and  most  of  his  ancestors  have  been 
successful  merchants  prominent  in  the  com- 
mercial life  of  New  York.  His  grandfather 
was  an  explorer  of  the  Ohio  and  Mississippi 
Rivers  on  the  first  steamboat  that  navi- 
gated them.  His  mother,  Martha  Bullock, 
was  from  the  South,  born  near  Atlanta, 
Ga.,  and  from  which  place  she  married  the 
President's  father,  Theodore  Roosevelt,  in 
1853. 

Roosevelt  began  his  preparation  for  col- 
lege in  the  autumn  of  1873,  when  fourteen 
years  of  age,  under  the  direction  of  Mr. 
Arthur  H.  Cutler,  of  the  Cutler  School, 


THEODORE    ROOSEVELT 

New  York  City.  This  was  after  the  re- 
turn from  a  long  trip  in  Europe  and 
Egypt.  His  health  was  not  good,  but 
Mr.  Cutler,  in  a  letter  to  the  present  writer, 
says  that  while  at  school  he  then  showed 
"  the  alert  mind,  retentive  memory,  and 
earnestness  of  purpose  which  has  since 
marked  his  public  life  and  his  private  life." 
He  entered  Harvard  University  in  1876, 
graduating  in  1880,  and  prepared  for  the 
bar  at  Columbia  University. 

He  was  elected  to  the  legislature  of 
New  York  in  1882,  in  which  he  served  three 
terms,  and  it  is  said  that  during  that  time 
he  introduced  and  carried  through  more 
important  city  legislation  than  was  ever 
brought  about  by  any  one  preceding  him. 

In  1884,  through  domestic  troubles  and 
ill  health,  Roosevelt  abandoned  his  political 
work  in  New  York  and  went  to  North 
Dakota,  where  he  had  purchased  a  cattle- 
ranch  of  considerable  size.  Here  the  con- 
tinued out-of-door  life  brought  him  health 
and  strength. 

vi 


THEODORE    ROOSEVELT 

In  1886  he  returned  to  the  East  as  a 
candidate  for  mayor  of  New  York,  but 
failed  to  secure  election.  The  next  three 
years  were  devoted  almost  entirely  to  lit- 
erary and  historical  work. 

In  1889  Roosevelt  was  appointed  a  mem- 
ber of  the  Civil  Service  Commission  at 
Washington,  and  soon  became  its  president, 
retaining  that  office  until  the  spring  of 
1895.  He  had  always  been  greatly  inter- 
ested in  civil  service  reform,  and  during 
his  connection  with  the  commission  the 
civil  service  rules  were  extended  to  more 
than  50,000  government  employees,  who 
before  were  not  protected  by  them. 

When  W.  L.  Strong  was  elected  mayor 
of  New  York  in  1894,  Roosevelt  accepted 
under  him  the  head  of  the  police  depart- 
ment, although  many  of  his  friends  in 
Washington  urged  him  not  to,  saying  that 
it  was  beneath  his  dignity.  During  the 
two  years  that  he  held  this  office,  however, 
he  placed  the  police  department  on  a  new 
and  thoroughly  efficient  basis,  and  success- 

vii 


THEODORE    ROOSEVELT 

fully  broke  up  the  system  of  blackmail 
which  had  prevailed  so  extensively  in  the 
department,  and  likewise  gained  the  ad- 
miration and  good  will  of  all  members  of 
the  New  York  police  force. 

In  1897  President  McKinley  offered 
Roosevelt  the  position  of  Assistant  Secre- 
tary of  the  Navy.  The  following  year  he 
resigned  this  position  to  become  the  lieu- 
tenant-colonel of  the  First  U.  S.  Volun- 
teer Cavalry,  popularly  known  as  the 
"  Rough  Riders."  It  had  been  through 
his  efforts  that  the  regiment  had  been 
formed,  consisting  largely  of  men  recruited 
from  the  Southern  and  Western  ranches, 
though  among  the  volunteers  were  many 
college  men.  Dr.  Leonard  Wood,  a  friend 
of  Roosevelt's,  an  army  surgeon  who  had 
large  experience  in  Indian  fighting  in  Ari- 
zona, was  made  colonel,  though  shortly 
after  the  regiment's  arrival  in  Cuba  Wood 
was  promoted  to  brigadier-general,  and 
Roosevelt  assumed  command  of  the  regi- 
ment as  colonel. 

viii 


THEODORE    ROOSEVELT 

On  September  27,  1898,  Roosevelt  was 
nominated  as  governor  of  New  York,  and 
was  elected  by  20,000  majority.  During 
his  two  years  as  governor  he  put  through, 
among  other  important  bills,  a  new  civil 
service  law,  and  the  revision  of  the  ten- 
ement-house laws. 

He  refused  a  second  term  as  governor 
of  New  York  to  accept  the  nomination  of 
Vice-President  in  McKinley's  second  term. 
On  the  assassination  of  McKinley  in  Sep- 
tember, 1901,  he  assumed  the  duties  of 
President  of  the  United  States. 

Besides  his  arduous  duties  as  a  politi- 
cian he  has  found  much  time  to  write,  and 
several  of  his  books  are  cited  as  authori- 
ties, noteworthily  his  "  History  of  the 
Naval  War  of  1812,"  published  in  1882. 
His  other  works  are :  "  Winning  of  the 
West,"  1889  -  96 ;  "  Hunting  Trips  of  a 
Ranchman,"  1885 ;  "  Life  of  Thomas  Hart 
Benton,"  1886;  "Life  of  Gouverneur 
Morris,"  1887;  "Ranch  Life  and  Hunt- 
ing Trail,"  1888;  "History  of  New 

ix 


THEODORE    ROOSEVELT 

York,"  1890 ;  "  American  Ideals  and  Other 
Essays,"  1897 ;  "  The  Wilderness  Hunter," 
1893;  "The  Rough  Riders,"  1899; 
"  Life  of  Oliver  Cromwell,"  1900 ;  "  The 
Strenuous  Life,"  1900,  and  part  author  of 
"  The  Deer  Family,"  1902. 

Hereto  are  attached  two  estimates  of 
Roosevelt  by  personal  friends,  though  in 
different  stations  of  life.  The  first  by 
Jacob  A.  Riis,  and  the  second  by  Bill 
Sewall,  a  guide  in  Maine,  who  also  was  his 
foreman  on  the  ranch  in  North  Dakota. 

"  A  man  with  red  blood  in  his  veins,  a 
healthy  patriot  with  no  clap-trap  jingoism 
about  him,  but  a  rugged  belief  in  America 
and  its  mission,  an  intense  lover  of  country 
and  flag,  a  vigorous  optimist  and  believer 
in  men,  who  looks  for  the  good  in  them  and 
finds  it.  Practical  in  partisanship,  loyal, 
trusting,  and  gentle  as  a  friend,  unselfish, 
modest  as  a  woman,  clean-handed  and 
clean-hearted,  and  honest  to  the  core.  In 
the  splendid  vigour  of  his  young  manhood 

x 


THEODORE    ROOSEVELT 

he  is  the  knightliest  figure  in  American 
politics  to-day,  the  fittest  exponent  of  his 
country's  idea,  and  the  model  for  its  young 
sons  who  are  coming  to  take  up  the  task 
he  set  them.  For  their  sake  I  am  willing 
to  give  him  up  and  set  him  where  they  can 
all  see  him  and  strive  to  be  like  him.  So 
we  shall  have  little  need  of  bothering  about 
boss  rule  and  misrule  hereafter.  We  shall 
farm  out  the  job  of  running  the  machine 
no  longer;  we  shall  be  able  to  run  it 
ourselves."  —  JACOB  A.  Rns,  in  the 
Review  of  Reviews. 

*'  If  you  want  to  ask  me  anything  about 
Colonel  Roosevelt,  you  can  just  go  ahead, 
for  I  am  never  tired  of  praising  him  — 
my  best  friend,  and  the  truest  friend  a 
man  ever  had.  Roosevelt  is,  first  of  all, 
an  honest  man,  and  one  of  the  plainest 
men  I  ever  met.  He  doesn't  judge  a  man 
by  the  clothes  he  wears,  or  by  his  position 
in  life.  He  takes  a  man  at  his  true  worth, 
and  he's  been  so  ever  since  I  can  remember, 

xi 


THEODORE    ROOSEVELT 

which  was  when  I  met  him  here,  as  a  boy, 
twenty-five  years  ago. 

"  No  wonder  his  Rough  Riders  wor- 
shipped him.  I'm  no  hero-worshipper  my- 
self, but  I  take  off  my  hat  to  Colonel 
Roosevelt,  the  best  and  truest  man  I  ever 
met.  I  know  him,  for  I  have  eaten  with 
him,  and  slept  under  the  same  blanket  with 
him.  They  say  that  to  know  much  about 
a  man  you  must  know  him  in  that  way. 

"  He'll  never  be  a  wealthy  man.  Why, 
I've  known  him  to  financially  aid  his  polit- 
ical opponents  when  they  got  into  a  tight 
place,  and  he  often  told  me  that  the  only 
pleasure  he  got  from  money  was  in  the  good 
that  he  could  do  with  it.  He  was  always 
looking  around  for  a  chance  to  help  some 
poor,  worthy  fellow. 

"  He  hates  sham  and  hypocrisy,  and 
when  he  was  a  boy,  hunting  up  here,  he 
used  to  pick  out  the  good,  square  fellows 
to  chum  with,  no  matter  how  they  dressed 
or  what  their  financial  condition  might  be. 

"  I  always  said  that  he'd  be  President 

xii 


THEODORE    ROOSEVELT 

some  day.  I  told  him  when  he  was  only 
eighteen  years  old  that  he'd  sit  in  the  White 
House  some  day.  Something  told  me  that 
he  would,  and  you  see  it  has  turned  out 
true.  He  used  to  laugh  at  me.  He  never 
wanted  to  be  in  public  life,  then. 

"  Why,  he  wanted  to  be  a  naturalist. 
He  loved  to  study  trees  and  animals,  and 
expected  to  devote  his  life  to  that  sort 
of  thing.  One  day,  when  we  were  out 
hunting,  he  said  to  me  in  a  sober  way: 

"  '  Bill,  I've  been  thinking  about  what 
I  shall  do  in  life,  and  I  feel  that  if  I  were 
to  follow  my  natural  bent  and  be  a  natural- 
ist I  would  be  robbing  my  fellow  men  of 
more  useful  service.  Consequently  I  have 
decided,  much  against  my  natural  incli- 
nation, to  go  into  public  life,  and  for  that 
I  shall  fit  myself  by  study  and  training.' 

"  I  am  confident  of  one  thing,  and  that 
is  that  unless  some  of  those  tricksters  get 
him  tangled  up,  they  will  never  be  able  to 
get  the  better  of  him,  and  they  will  find 
him  the  hardest  man  to  corrupt  that  they 

xiii 


THEODORE    ROOSEVELT 

ever  tackled.  I  know  this  as  well  as  I 
know  that  I'm  alive ;  I  know  his  every  trait, 
for  I  spent  the  happiest  years  of  my  life 
with  him,  both  here  and  on  his  ranch  in 
Dakota,  where  for  three  years  I  was  his 
foreman. 

"  How  did  I  come  to  meet  Roosevelt  ? 
Well,  it  must  be  some  twenty-five  odd  years 
ago  that  his  cousins,  Dr.  J.  West  Roosevelt 
and  W.  E.  Roosevelt,  the  latter  a  wealthy 
banker  of  New  York,  used  to  come  here 
to  hunt  in  the  fall.  Once  they  told  me  that 
they  were  going  to  invite  a  young  relative 
of  theirs  up  here. 

"  They  said  his  name  was  '  Teddy ' 
Roosevelt,  and  that  he  was  a  college 
student.  They  cautioned  me  about  him, 
as  I  now  recollect,  saying  that  he  was  a 
gritty,  headstrong  youngster  who  had  more 
sand  in  his  crop  than  he  had  strength,  and 
they  wanted  me  to  take  the  best  of  care 
of  him. 

"  Well,  he  came.  He  was  a  pale,  rather 
delicate  young  man  of  about  eighteen,  but 

xiv 


THEODORE    ROOSEVELT 

the  toughest  boy  physically  and  the  great- 
est mentally  that  I  ever  met.  I  gave  him 
the  room  right  over  this  one  we're  sitting 
in,  and  we  went  out  hunting.  He  took 
the  greatest  interest  in  the  woods,  and  never 
complained  of  being  tired,  although  I 
knew  many  a  time  that  he  was  hardly  able 
to  drag  himself  home  after  a  long  tramp. 

"  That  boy  would  never  give  up.  He'd 
always  take  the  biggest  end  of  the  stick, 
too,  and  many  a  time  I  was  afraid  he'd 
collapse  on  me,  but  he  would  cheer  right 
up,  and  say  he  was  as  fresh  as  a  daisy. 
Talk  about  grit!  He  was  all  grit. 

"  He  came  year  after  year,  and  we  went 
out  into  the  woods.  Among  others  he  met 
Bill  Dow,  the  fairest  and  squarest  man  that 
ever  lived,  and  the  best  shot  in  Aroostook 
County.  That's  Bill's  picture  over  there 
on  the  wall.  When  he  died  I  lost  a  good 
friend.  We  were  together  on  Roosevelt's 
ranch  out  in  the  Bad  Lands,  and  it  was  a 
toss-up  who  was  foreman  —  Bill  or  myself. 
When  Roosevelt  started  out  on  his  new 

XV 


THEODORE    ROOSEVELT 

career,  he  didn't  forget  us,  and  asked  Bill 
and  me  to  go  out  to  his  ranch  in  Dakota. 

"  This  was  along  in  '84,  and  Bill  and 
I  went  to  New  York  to  meet  him.  We 
found  him  in  the  Fifth  Avenue  Hotel,  sur- 
rounded by  politicians,  and  when  he  spied 
us  he  rushed  up  with  both  hands  held  out. 
He  was  glad  to  see  us,  for  a  fact.  Well, 
he  engaged  us  to  go  out  to  Dakota.  Neither 
of  us  knew  anything  about  ranches  or 
bucking  bronchos,  but  Colonel  Roosevelt 
said  that  we  were  all  right,  and  that  he 
wanted  some  Maine  men  to  look  out  for  his 
interests. 

"  The  ranch  was  located  on  the  Little 
Missouri,  about  thirty  miles  from  Medora, 
on  the  Northern  Pacific.  Medora  was 
named  after  the  wife  of  the  Marquis  de 
Mores,  and  the  marquis  owned  the  lands  on 
both  sides  of  the  Roosevelt  ranch.  He 
had  in  his  employ  the  toughest  lot  of 
cowboys  in  that  part  of  the  country,  and 
there  was  trouble  in  the  air  all  the  time. 
The  marquis  and  his  gang  seemed  to  think 

xvi 


THEODORE    ROOSEVELT 

they  could  run  the  whole  country,  and 
threw  a  lot  of  big  bluffs  our  way. 

"  Two  men  named  Reilly  and  O'Donnell 
were  told  by  the  marquis  that  they  were 
encroaching  on  his  land,  and  notified  by 
him  that  if  they  didn't  get  out  at  once 
they  would  be  shot  on  sight.  One  day 
these  two  men  were  fired  upon  from  am- 
bush, Reilly  being  killed  and  O'Donnell 
crippled  for  life.  The  marquis  was  arrested 
and  tried  for  the  murder  of  Reilly,  but  his 
money  saved  him  from  the  gallows  —  he 
was  acquitted. 

"  Soon  after  this  Bill  and  I  were  notified 
that  if  we  didn't  get  East  where  we  be- 
longed our  bones  would  be  found  on  the 
ranch,  and  the  life  of  Colonel  Roosevelt 
also  was  threatened.  The  De  Mores  crowd 
claimed  that  we  were  on  their  land. 

"  A  man  named  Paddock  was  De  Mores' 
right-hand  man,  and  he  made  the  open 
threat  that  he  would  shoot  Colonel  Roose- 
velt on  sight. 

"  The  colonel  was  in  New  York  at  the 

xvii 


THEODORE    ROOSEVELT 

time,  but  the  day  he  got  back  to  the  ranch 
and  heard  what  had  been  going  on,  he 
mounted  his  horse  and  rode  straight  over 
to  the  De  Mores  ranch.  He  hunted  up 
Paddock,  and  said: 

"  '  I  understand  that  you  have  threat- 
ened to  kill  me  on  sight.  Now,  I  have  come 
over  to  see  when  you  want  to  begin  the 
killing,  and  to  inform  you  that  if  you  have 
anything  to  say  against  me  now  is  the 
time  to  say  it.' 

"  Paddock  turned  pale,  and  stuttered 
out  something  about  it  being  all  a  mistake ; 
that  he  had  never  made  any  such  threats. 
He  made  all  sorts  of  apologies,  and  then 
Colonel  Roosevelt  rode  back  to  his  ranch. 

"  Next  came  a  challenge  from  the  Mar- 
quis de  Mores  to  Colonel  Roosevelt.  The 
marquis  sent  a  letter  saying  that  the  colonel 
had  influenced  one  of  the  witnesses  against 
him  in  the  murder  trial,  and  declaring  that 
between  gentlemen  such  differences  could 
be  settled  in  but  one  way,  meaning,  of 

xviii 


THEODORE    ROOSEVELT 

course,  by  a  duel.  Colonel  Roosevelt  said 
to  me: 

" '  Bill,  I  don't  want  to  disgrace  my 
family  by  fighting  a  duel;  but  I  won't 
be  bullied  by  a  Frenchman.  Now,  as  I  am 
the  challenged  party,  I  have  the  privilege 
of  naming  the  weapons.  I  am  no  swords- 
man, and  pistols  are  too  uncertain  and 
Frenchy  for  me;  so  what  do  you  say  if 
I  make  it  rifles? 

"  '  I'll  just  write  to  the  marquis,  saying 
that  I  have  not  done  anything  to  injure 
him,  but  if  his  letter  is  meant  as  a  chal- 
lenge, and  he  insists  upon  having  satisfac- 
tion, I  will  meet  him  with  rifles  at  ten  paces 
—  both  to  fire  until  one  drops.' 

"  I  was  horrified,  and  said  that  such  a 
fight  meant  certain  death  for  one  or  both, 
but  I  couldn't  stop  it,  and  the  colonel  sat 
down  on  a  log  and  wrote  to  De  Mores, 
stating  his  terms  of  duelling.  It  must 
have  frightened  the  marquis  half  to  death, 
for  the  answer  came  by  the  very  next  post, 
to  the  effect  that  he  had  no  intention  of 

xix 


THEODORE    ROOSEVELT 

challenging  Roosevelt  —  that  what  he 
meant  by  his  letter  was  that  '  differences 
between  gentlemen  could  be  settled  without 
trouble.' 

"  The  marquis  and  his  wife  came  over  to 
our  ranch  the  next  day  and  called  upon 
Colonel  Roosevelt,  and  always  after  that 
were  very  friendly. 

"  I  don't  think  Roosevelt  ever  made  a 
dollar  out  there,  but,  as  I  have  said,  he 
didn't  care  much  for  money.  He  seemed 
to  enjoy  the  ranch  life,  and  the  cowboys 
thought  a  lot  of  him.  He  was  a  pretty 
good  shot  for  a  man  who  couldn't  see  a 
foot  without  glasses,  and  we  had  a  good 
many  hunting  trips  together. 

"  After  three  years  of  ranching  we  de- 
cided to  come  back  East.  Roosevelt  was 
being  constantly  called  to>  New  York,  and 
had  very  little  time  to  devote  to  the  cattle 
business,  anyway. 

"  I  expect  to  see  him  soon,  now,  and  I 
know  he'll  be  j  ust  the  same  —  he  is  the 
same  Teddy  Roosevelt,  whether  sitting  in 

xx 


THEODORE    ROOSEVELT 

the  White  House,  rounding  up  cattle  in 
the  Bad  Lands,  or  hunting  deer  on  the 
Aroostook  River."  —  BILL  SEWALL,  in  the 
Boston  Globe,  Aug.  28,  1902. 

From  his  writings  and  speeches  Roose- 
velt, the  Man,  shows  predominantly,  and 
we  trust  the  readers  of  this  little  book  will 
find  enjoyment  in  his  terse,  epigrammatic 
thoughts. 


xxi 


STRENUOUS   EPIGRAMS 


SPEECH  ON  WILLIAM    McKINLEY 

Delivered     at     Canton,     Ohio,     January 
27,  1903. 

IT  was  given  to  President  McKinley  to 
take  the  foremost  place  in  our  political  life 
at  a  time  when  our  country  was  brought 
face  to  face  with  problems  more  momen- 
tous than  any  whose  solution  we  have  ever 
attempted,  save  only  in  the  Revolution  and 
in  the  Civil  War;  and  it  was  under  his 
leadership  that  the  nation  solved  these 
mighty  problems  aright.  Therefore,  he 
shall  stand  in  the  eyes  of  history,  not 
merely  as  the  first  man  of  his  generation, 
but  as  among  the  greatest  figures  in  our 
national  life,  coming  second  only  to  the 

1 


STRENUOUS   EPIGRAMS 

men  of  the  two  great  crises  in  which  the 
Union  was  founded  and  preserved. 

No  man  could  carry  through,  success- 
fully, such  a  task  as  President  McKinley 
undertook,  unless  trained  by  long  years 
of  effort  for  its  performance.  Knowledge 
of  his  fellow  citizens,  ability  to  understand 
them,  keen  sympathy  with  even  their  inner- 
most feelings,  and  yet  power  to  lead  them, 
together  with  far-sighted  sagacity  and  res- 
olute belief  both  in  the  people  and  in  their 
future  —  all  these  were  needed  in  the  man 
who  headed  the  march  of  our  people  dur- 
ing the  eventful  years  from  1896  to  1901. 
These  were  the  qualities  possessed  by 
McKinley  and  developed  by  him  throughout 
his  whole  history  previous  to  assuming  the 
presidency. 

As  a  lad  he  had  the  inestimable  privilege 
of  serving,  first  in  the  ranks,  and  then  as 
a  commissioned  officer,  in  the  great  war  for 
National  Union,  righteousness  and  gran- 
deur; he  was  one  of  those  whom  a  kindly 
Providence  permitted  to  take  part  in  a 
struggle  which  ennobled  every  man  who 
fought  therein.  He  who  when  little  more 

2 


STRENUOUS    EPIGRAMS 

than  a  boy  had  seen  the  grim  steadfastness 
which  after  four  years  of  giant  struggle 
restored  the  Union  and  freed  the  slave,  was 
not  thereafter  to  be  daunted  by  danger 
or  frightened  out  of  his  belief  in  the  great 
destiny  of  our  people. 

President  McKinley's  rise  to  greatness 
had  in  it  nothing  of  the  sudden,  nothing  of 
the  unexpected  or  seemingly  accidental. 
Throughout  his  long  term  of  service  in 
Congress  there  was  a  steady  increase  alike 
in  his  power  of  leadership  and  in  the  recog- 
nition of  that  power  both  by  his  associates 
in  public  life  and  by  the  public  itself.  Ses- 
sion after  session  his  influence  in  the  House 
grew  greater;  his  party  antagonists  grew 
to  look  upon  him  with  constantly  increas- 
ing respect;  his  party  friends  with  con- 
stantly increasing  faith  and  admiration. 

Eight  years  before  he  was  nominated 
for  President  he  was  already  considered 
a  presidential  possibility.  Four  years  be- 
fore he  was  nominated  only  his  own  high 
sense  of  honour  prevented  his  being  made 
a  formidable  competitor  of  the  chief  upon 
whom  the  choice  of  the  convention  then 


STRENUOUS    EPIGRAMS 

actually  fell.  In  1896  he  was  chosen  be- 
cause the  great  mass  of  his  party  knew  him 
and  believed  in  him  and  regarded  him 
as  symbolizing  their  ideals,  as  representing 
their  aspirations. 

But  even  as  a  candidate  President 
McKinley  was  far  more  than  the  candidate 
of  a  party,  and  as  President  he  was  in  the 
broadest  and  fullest  sense  the  President 
of  all  the  people  of  all  sections  of  the 
country. 

His  first  nomination  came  to  him  be- 
cause of  the  qualities  he  had  shown  in 
healthy  and  open  political  leadership,  the 
leadership  which  by  word  and  deed  im- 
presses itself  as  a  virile  force  for  good  upon 
the  people  at  large,  and  which  has  noth- 
ing in  common  with  mere  intrigue  or  ma- 
nipulation. But  in  1896  the  issue  was  fairly 
joined,  chiefly  upon  a  question  which  as  a 
party  question  was  entirely  new,  so  that 
the  old  lines  of  political  cleavage  were  in 
large  part  abandoned.  All  other  issues 
sank  in  importance  when  compared  with 
the  vital  need  of  keeping  our  financial  sys- 
tem on  the  high  and  honourable  plane  im- 

4 


STRENUOUS    EPIGRAMS 

peratively  demanded  by  our  position  as 
a  great  civilized  power. 

As  the  champion  of  such  a  principle 
President  McKinley  received  the  support 
not  only  of  his  own  party  but  of  hundreds 
of  thousands  of  those  to  whom  he  had  been 
politically  opposed.  He  triumphed,  and 
he  made  good  with  scrupulous  fidelity  the 
promises  upon  which  the  campaign  was 
won.  We  were  at  the  time  in  a  period  of 
great  industrial  depression,  and  it  was 
promised  for  and  on  behalf  of  McKinley 
that  if  he  were  elected  our  financial  system 
should  not  only  be  preserved  unharmed, 
but  improved  and  our  economic  system 
shaped  in  accordance  with  those  theories 
which  have  always  marked  our  periods  of 
greatest  prosperity.  The  promises  were 
kept,  and  following  their  keeping  came 
the  prosperity  which  we  now  enjoy.  All 
that  was  foretold  concerning  the  well-being 
which  would  follow  the  election  of  McKinley 
has  been  justified  by  the  event. 

But  as  so  often  happens  in  our  history, 
the  President  was  forced  to  face  questions 
other  than  those  at  issue  at  the  time  of  his 

5 


STRENUOUS   EPIGRAMS 

election.  Within  a  year  the  situation  in 
Cuba  had  become  literally  intolerable. 
President  McKinley  had  fought  too  well 
in  his  youth,  he  knew  too  well  at  first  hand 
what  war  really  was,  lightly  to  enter  into 
a  struggle.  He  sought  by  every  honour- 
able means  to  preserve  peace,  to  avert  war. 
Then,  when  it  became  evident  that  these 
efforts  were  useless,  that  peace  could  not 
be  honourably  entertained,  he  devoted  his 
strength  to  making  the  war  as  short  and 
as  decisive  as  possible.  It  is  needless  to 
tell  the  result  in  detail. 

There  followed  a  harder  task.  As  a 
result  of  the  war  we  came  into  possession 
of  Cuba,  Porto  Rico,  and  the  Philippines. 
In  each  island  the  conditions  were  such 
that  we  had  to  face  problems  entirely  new 
to  our  national  experience,  and,  moreover, 
in  each  island  or  group  of  islands  the 
problems  differed  radically  from  those 
presented  in  the  others.  In  Porto  Rico  the 
task  was  simple.  The  island  could  not  be 
independent.  It  became  in  all  essentials 
a  part  of  the  Union.  It  has  been  given  all 
the  benefits  of  our  economic  and  financial 


STRENUOUS   EPIGRAMS 

system.  Its  inhabitants  have  been  given  the 
highest  individual  liberty,  while  yet  their 
government  has  been  kept  under  the 
supervision  of  officials  so  well  chosen  that 
the  island  can  be  appealed  to  as  afford- 
ing a  model  for  all  such  experiments  in 
the  future. 

In  Cuba,  where  we  were  pledged  to  give 
the  island  independence,  the  pledge  was 
kept  not  merely  in  letter  but  in  spirit.  It 
would  have  been  a  betrayal  of  our  duty 
to  have  given  Cuba  independence  out  of 
hand.  President  McKinley,  with  his  usual 
singular  sagacity  in  the  choice  of  agents, 
selected  in  General  Leonard  Wood  the  man 
of  all  others  best  fit  to  bring  the  island 
through  its  uncertain  period  of  prepara- 
tion for  independence,  and  the  result  of  his 
wisdom  was  shown  when  last  May  the  island 
became  in  name  and  in  fact  a  free  republic, 
for  it  started  with  a  better  equipment  and 
under  more  favourable  conditions  than 
had  ever  previously  been  the  case  with  any 
Spanish-American  commonwealth. 

Finally,  in  the  Philippines,  the  problem 
was  one  of  great  complexity.  There  was 

7 


an  insurrectionary  party  claiming  to  rep- 
resent the  people  of  the  islands  and  put- 
ting forth  their  claims  with  a  certain  spe- 
ciousness  which  deceived  no  small  number 
of  excellent  men  here  at  home,  and  which 
afforded  to  yet  others  a  chance  to  arouse 
a  factious  party  spirit  against  the  Presi- 
dent. 

A  weaker  and  less  far-sighted  man  than 
President  McKinley  would  have  shrunk 
from  a  task  very  difficult  in  itself,  and 
certain  to  furnish  occasion  for  attack  and 
misrepresentation  no  less  than  for  honest 
misunderstanding.  But  President  Mc- 
Kinley never  flinched.  He  refused  to  con- 
sider the  thought  of  abandoning  our  duty 
in  our  new  possessions.  While  sedulously 
endeavouring  to  act  with  the  utmost  human- 
ity toward  the  insurrectionists,  he  never 
faltered  in  the  determination  to  put  them 
down  by  force  of  arms,  alike  for  the  sake 
of  our  own  interest  and  honour,  and  for 
the  sake  of  the  interest  of  the  islanders, 
and  particularly  of  the  great  numbers  of 
friendly  natives,  including  those  most 
highly  civilized,  for  whom  abandonment 

8 


STRENUOUS    EPIGRAMS 

by  us  would  have  meant  ruin  and  death. 
Again  his  policy  was  most  amply  vindi- 
cated. 

Peace  has  come  to  the  islands,  together 
with  a  greater  measure  of  individual  liberty 
and  self-government  than  they  have  ever 
before  known.  All  the  tasks  set  us  as  a 
result  of  the  war  with  Spain  have  so  far 
been  well  and  honourably  accomplished, 
and  as  a  result  this  nation  stands  higher 
than  ever  before  among  the  nations  of 
mankind. 

President  McKinley's  second  campaign 
was  fought  mainly  on  the  issue  of  approv- 
ing what  he  had  done  in  his  first  adminis- 
tration, and  specifically  what  he  had  done 
as  regards  these  problems  springing  out 
of  the  war  with  Spain.  The  result  was  that 
the  popular  verdict  in  his  favour  was  more 
overwhelming  than  it  had  been  before. 

We  are  gathered  together  to-night  to 
recall  his  memory,  to  pay  our  tribute  of 
respect  to  the  great  chief  and  leader  who 
fell  in  the  harness,  who  was  stricken  down 
while  his  eyes  were  bright  with  the  "  light 
that  tells  of  triumph  tasted."  We  can 

9 


STRENUOUS   EPIGRAMS 

honour  him  best  by  the  way  we  show  in 
actual  deed  that  we  have  taken  to  heart 
the  lessons  of  his  life.  We  must  strive  to 
achieve,  each  in  the  measure  that  he  can, 
something  of  the  qualities  which  made 
President  McKinley  a  leader  of  men,  a 
mighty  power  for  good  —  his  strength, 
his  courage,  his  courtesy  and  dignity,  his 
sense  of  justice,  his  ever  present  kindness 
and  regard  for  the  rights  of  others.  He 
won  greatness  by  meeting  and  solving  the 
issues  as  they  arose  —  not  by  shirking 
them  —  meeting  them  with  wisdom,  with 
the  exercise  of  the  most  skilful  and  cau- 
tious judgment,  but  with  fearless  resolu- 
tion when  the  time  of  crisis  came. 

He  met  each  crisis  on  its  own  merits; 
he  never  sought  excuse  for  shirking  a  task 
in  the  fact  that  it  was  different  from  the 
one  he  had  expected  to  face.  The  long 
public  career,  which  opened  when  as  a  boy 
he  carried  a  musket  in  the  ranks  and  closed 
when  as  a  man  in  the  prime  of  his  in- 
tellectual strength  he  stood  among  the 
world's  chief  statesmen,  came  to  what  it 
was  because  he  treated  each  triumph  as 

10 


STRENUOUS    EPIGRAMS 

opening  the  road  to  fresh  effort,  not  as  an 
excuse  for  ceasing  from  effort. 

He  undertook  mighty  tasks.  Some  of 
them  he  finished  completely ;  others  we 
must  finish;  and  there  remain  yet  others 
which  he  did  not  have  to  face,  but  which, 
if  we  are  worthy  to  be  the  inheritors  of 
his  principles,  we  will  in  our  turn  face  with 
the  same  resolution,  the  same  sanity,  the 
same  unfaltering  belief  in  the  greatness 
of  this  country,  and  unfaltering  champion- 
ship of  the  rights  of  each  and  all  of  our 
people,  which  marked  his  high  and  splendid 
career. 


11 


STRENUOUS  EPIGRAMS 


Now  at  the  outset  of  the  twentieth  cen- 
tury we  are  facing  difficult  and  complex 
problems,  problems  social  and  economical, 
which  will  tax  the  best  energies  of  all  of  us 
to  solve  right,  and  which  we  can  only  solve 
at  all  if  we  approach  them  in  a  spirit  not 
merely  of  common  sense,  but  of  generous 
desire  to  act  each  for  all  and  all  for  each. 


When  you  take  up  science,  art,  and  liter- 
ature, remember  that  one  first-class  bit  of 
work  is  better  than  one  thousand  fairly 
good  bits  of  work ;  that  as  the  years  roll  on, 
the  man  or  the  woman  who  has  been  able 

13 


STRENUOUS   EPIGRAMS 

to  make  a  masterpiece  with  the  pen,  the 
brush,  the  pencil,  in  any  way,  that  that  man, 
that  woman,  has  rendered  a  service  to  the 
country  such  as  not  all  his  or  her  compeers 
who  merely  do  fairly  good  second-rate  work 
can  ever  accomplish. 


In  the  long  run,  the  most  unpleasant 
truth  is  a  safer  companion  than  a  pleasant 
falsehood. 


The  man  or  woman  who  seeks  to  bring 
up  children  to  secure  happiness  by  avoid- 
ing trouble;  to  bring  them  up  so  they 
cannot  stand  tough  knocks,  is  wronging 
the  children  in  a  way  and  a  degree  that 
no  other  human  being  could  wrong  them. 
If  you  want  your  children  to  be  successful 
you  should  teach  them  that  the  life  that 
is  worth  living  is  worth  working  for.  What 

14 


STRENUOUS    EPIGRAMS 

a  wretched  life  is  that  of  a  man  who  seeks 
to  shirk  the  burden  laid  on  us  in  this  world ! 
It  is  equally  ignoble  in  either  case, 
whether  it  is  a  man  of  wealth  or  one  who 
earns  his  bread  by  the  sweat  of  his  brow. 


The  greatness  of  the  fathers  becomes 
to  the  children  a  shameful  thing  if  they 
use  it  only  as  an  excuse  for  inaction  in- 
stead of  as  a  spur  to  effort  for  noble 
aims. 


All  the  time,  gentlemen,  we  have 
people  —  often  entirely  well  meaning  — 
who  will  rise  up  and  tell  us  that  by  some 
patent  device  we  can  all  be  saved  in  citizen- 
ship or  in  social  life.  Now,  general,  and 
you,  and  you  who  wear  the  button,  when  you 
came  down  to  the  root  of  things  in  war 
time  you  had  to  depend  upon  the  quali- 

15 


STRENUOUS   EPIGRAMS 

ties  of  manhood  which  had  made  good 
soldiers  from  the  days  when  the  children 
of  Israel  marched  out  of  Egypt  down. 

Rifles  now,  instead  of  bows  then,  but 
the  man  behind  the  rifle  is  more  important 
than  the  rifle  is  itself. 

Now  the  great  problem  that  we  should 
set  before  us  is  to  keep  prosperity,  to  render 
its  advantages  less  unequal,  to  try  to  se- 
cure a  greater  equality  of  its  benefits,  but 
above  all,  never  under  any  circumstances 
to  lend  ourselves  to  the  leadership  of  any 
who  appeal  to  the  baser  passions  of  man- 
kind, and  who,  because  there  is  inequality 
in  prosperity,  would  seek  to  substitute  for 
that  unequal  prosperity  community  in 
disaster. 

Remember  that  always.  Evils  have  come 
through  our  very  prosperity,  but  in  warring 
against  evil  let  us  be  exceeding  careful 
not  to  war  against  the  prosperity.  As  I 

16 


STRENUOUS   EPIGRAMS 

have  said  before  to-day  once,  it  is  mighty 
easy  to  destroy  any  disease  if  you  are 
willing  to  kill  the  patient,  but  it  is  not 
good  for  the  patient. 

Let  us  face  the  fact  that  there  are  evils. 
It  is  foolish  to  blink  at  those  evils.  Let 
us  set  ourselves,  but  temperately  and  with 
sanity,  to  strive  to  find  out  what  the  evils 
are  and  to  remedy  them. 


Brilliancy  is  a  good  thing.  So  is 
genius.  But  normally  what  we  want  is  not 
genius,  but  the  faculty  of  seeing  that  we 
know  how  to  apply  the  copy-book  moral- 
ities that  we  write  down,  and  as  long  as 
we  think  of  them  only  as  fit  for  the  copy- 
book there  is  not  much  use  in  us. 


It  is  a  very  good  thing,  indeed,  it  is 
an   indispensable   thing,   to  have  material 
IT 


STRENUOUS    EPIGRAMS 

well-being.  You  have  got  to  have  that  at 
the  base  of  our  civilization,  but  if  you  do 
not  build  something  more  on  top  of  it  you 
have  only  got  the  foundation,  and  the  foun- 
dation is  a  mighty  bad  place  in  which  to 
live.  It  is  essential  to  have  it  and  you  have 
got  to  have  it  for  the  support  of  the  super- 
structure, but  you  have  got  to  have  the 
superstructure  put  in  in  addition  to  the 
material  prosperity. 

jfc  Jk  Jk 

Poverty  is  a  bitter  thing,  but  it  is 
not  as  bitter  as  restless  vacuity  and  phys- 
ical, moral,  and  intellectual  flabbiness  to 
which  those  doom  themselves  who  elect  to 
spend  all  their  years  in  that  vainest  of  all 
vain  pursuits  —  pursuit  of  mere  pleasure 
as  a  sufficient  end  in  itself. 


You  are  not  going  to  do  very  much  good 
with  human  nature  if  you  attempt  to  take 

18 


STRENUOUS    EPIGRAMS 

the  bad  out  of  it,  by  leaving  a  vacuum, 
for  that  vacuum  is  going  to  be  filled  with 
something,  and  if  you  do  not  fill  it  with 
what  is  good  it  will  be  filled  with  what  is 
evil. 


We  must  have  honest,  fearless,  and  able 
administration,  the  enforcement  of  law,  but 
the  law  must  be  so  framed  and  so  admin- 
istered as  to  secure  justice  for  all  alike  — 
a  square  deal  for  every  man,  great  or  small, 
rich  or  poor. 

That  we  have  got  to  have.  It  will  then 
still  remain  true  that  the  chief  factor  in 
any  man's  individual  success  must  be  the 
sum  of  those  qualities  which  we  speak  of 
as  character  in  any  man  —  his  energy,  his 
perseverance,  his  intelligence,  his  business 
thrift ;  no  laws,  however  good,  could  begin 
to  supply  the  lack  of  those  qualities  in  any 
man. 

19 


STRENUOUS   EPIGRAMS 

Prosperity    by    itself    never    made    any 
man  happy. 


The  old  pioneer  days  are  gone,  with 
their  roughness  and  their  hardship,  their 
incredible  toil  and  their  wild  half-savage 
romance.  But  the  need  for  the  pioneer  vir- 
tues remains  the  same  as  ever. 

The  peculiar  frontier  conditions  have 
vanished,  but  the  manliness  and  stalwart 
hardihood  of  the  frontiersmen  can  be  given 
even  freer  scope  under  the  conditions  sur- 
rounding the  complex  industrialism  of  the 
present  day. 

We  must  insist  upon  courage  and  reso- 
lution, upon  hardihood,  tenacity  and  fer- 
tility in  resource;  we  must  insist  upon  the 
strong  virile  virtues,  and  we  must  insist  no 
less  upon  the  virtues  of  self-restraint,  self- 
mastery,  regard  for  the  rights  of  others; 
we  must  show  our  abhorrence  of  cruelty, 
brutality,  and  corruption,  in  public  and 
in  private  life  alike. 

20 


STRENUOUS   EPIGRAMS 

You  have  got  to  have  morality  first,  but 
if  morality  has  not  common  sense  with  it, 
the  result  is  apt  to  be  unhappy. 


The  law  can  do  something,  but  the  law 
never  yet  made  a  fool  wise  or  a  coward 
brave  or  a  weakling  strong. 


If  the  man  has  not  got  in  him  the  stuff 
out  of  which  he  can  work  success,  the  state 
cannot  supply  it.  What  can  be  done  by 
the  state,  by  the  nation,  is  to  make  the 
conditions  such  that  each  man  shall  be 
able  under  the  best  circumstances,  with 
everything  most  favourable  to  him,  to  work 
out  his  fate  for  himself. 

If  under  those  circumstances  he  fails, 
I  am  sorry  for  him.  I  will  help  him  as  far 
as  possible.  I  will  lift  him  up  if  he  stumbles 
but  I  won't  try  to  carry  him,  for  that  is 
neither  healthy  for  him  nor  for  me. 

21 


STRENUOUS   EPIGRAMS 

If  you  don't  know  how  to  handle  your 
gun,  you  will  be  beaten  by  a  man  with  a 
club. 


Education  is  not  enough.  The  men  of 
thin  intellects,  the  men  who  are  only  com- 
petent to  feel  intellectual  emotion,  are  not 
the  men  who  will  make  a  great  nation. 
You  have  got  to  have  in  addition  to  the 
intellect  what  counts  for  much  more  than 
that  —  character.  And  in  character  you 
have  got  to  have  men  good,  and  you  have 
got  to  have  them  strong. 


In  private  life  there  are  few  things  more 
obnoxious  than  the  man  who  is  always 
loudly  boasting,  and  if  the  boaster  is  not 
prepared  to  back  up  his  words  his  position 
becomes  absolutely  contemptible.  So  it  is 
with  the  nation. 

22 


STRENUOUS    EPIGRAMS 

Before  we  can  do  anything  with  the 
higher  life,  before  we  can  have  the  higher 
thinking,  there  must  be  enough  of  material 
comfort  to  allow  for  at  least  plain  living. 
We  have  got  to  have  that  first  before  we  can 
do  the  high  thinking;  but  if  we  are  to 
count  in  the  long  run,  we  must  have  built 
upon  the  material  prosperity  the  power 
and  desire  to  give  to  our  lives  other  than 
a  merely  material  side. 


If  there  is  one  lesson  which  I  think  each 
of  us  learns  as  he  grows  older,  it  is  that  it 
is  not  what  the  man  works  at,  provided,  of 
course,  it  is  respectable  and  honourable  in 
character,  that  fixes  his  place ;  it  is  the  way 
he  works  at  it. 


Envy  is  merely  the  meanest  form  of  ad- 
miration, and  a  man  who  envies  another 
admits  thereby  his  own  inferiority. 

23 


STRENUOUS   EPIGRAMS 

Now  when  we  come  to  the  question  of 
good  citizenship,  the  first  requisite  is  that 
a  man  shall  do  the  homely,  every-day  hum- 
drum duties  well.  A  man  is  not  a  good 
citizen,  I  do  not  care  how  lofty  his  thoughts 
are  about  citizenship  in  the  abstract,  if  in 
the  concrete  his  actions  do  not  bear  them 
out,  and  it  does  not  make  much  difference 
how  high  are  his  aspirations  for  mankind 
at  large  if  he  does  not  behave  well  in  his 
own  family,  those  aspirations  are  not  going 
to  bear  very  visible  fruit. 

He  has  got  to  be  a  good  breadwinner, 
he  has  got  to  take  care  of  his  wife  and 
children,  he  has  got  to  be  a  neighbour  whom 
his  neighbours  can  trust.  He  has  got  to  act 
squarely  in  his  business  relations  —  he  has 
got  to  do  all  those  every-day  and  ordinary 
things  first  or  he  is  not  a  good  citizen. 

He  has  got  to  do  more  than  that.  In 
this  country  of  ours  he  has  got  to  devote, 
the  average  citizen  has  got  to  devote,  a 
good  deal  of  thought  and  time  to  the 
affairs  of  the  state  as  a  whole  or  those 

24 


STRENUOUS    EPIGRAMS 

affairs  are  going  to  go  badly,  and  he  has 
got  to  devote  that  thought  and  that  time 
steadily  and  intelligently. 


A  nation  must  first  take  care  to  do  well 
its  duties  within  its  own  borders,  but  must 
not  make  of  that  fact  an  excuse  for  fail- 
ing to  do  those  of  its  duties  the  performance 
of  which  lie  without  its  own  borders. 


Publicity  itself  would  cure  many  evils. 
The  light  of  day  is  a  great  deterrent  to 
wrong-doing.  If  the  mere  fact  of  being 
able  to  put  it  nakedly  and  with  the  cer- 
tainty that  the  statements  were  true  a  given 
condition  of  things  that  was  wrong  would 
go  a  long  distance  toward  curing  that 
wrong. 

25 


STRENUOUS    EPIGRAMS 

It  is  easy  for  those  who  stay  at  home 
in  comfort,  who  never  have  to  see  humanity 
in  the  raw,  or  to  strive  against  the  dread- 
ful naked  forces  which  appear  clothed, 
hidden  and  subdued  in  civilized  life  —  it  is 
easy  for  such  to  criticize  the  men  who,  in 
rough  fashion,  and  amid  grim  surround- 
ings, make  ready  the  way  for  the  higher 
life  that  is  to  come  afterward ;  but  let  us  all 
remember  that  the  untempted  and  the 
effortless  should  be  cautious  in  passing  too 
heavy  judgment  upon  their  brethren  who 
may  show  hardness,  who  may  be  guilty  of 
shortcomings,  but  who  nevertheless  do  the 
great  deeds  by  which  mankind  advances. 


It  is  not  enough  to  have  mere  aspiration 
after  righteousness ;  it  is  not  enough  to 
have  the  lofty  ideal;  with  it  must  go  the 
power  of  in  some  sort  practically  realizing 
it. 

26 


STRENUOUS    EPIGRAMS 

I  do  not  care  whether  a  man  is  a  banker 
or  a  bricklayer;  if  he  is  a  good  banker  or 
a  good  bricklayer  he  is  a  good  citizen;  if 
he  is  dishonest,  if  he  is  tricky,  if  he  shirks 
his  job  or  tries  to  cheat  his  neighbour,  be 
he  great  or  small,  be  he  the  poor  man  cheat- 
ing the  rich  man,  or  the  rich  man  oppress- 
ing the  poor  man,  in  either  case  he  is  a 
bad  citizen. 


I  see  everywhere  I  stop  —  in  Maine,  as 
in  Massachusetts,  New  Hampshire,  and 
Connecticut  —  men  who,  in  the  times  that 
tried  the  nation's  worth,  rose  level  to  the 
nation's  need,  and  offered  up  life  gladly 
upon  the  nation's  altar  —  the  men  who 
fought  in  the  great  Civil  War  from 
'61  to  '65. 

They  taught  us  much  by  their  life  in 
war  time,  and  they  have  taught  us  as  much 
by  their  life  ever  since. 

They  were  soldiers  when  we  needed  sol- 

27 


STRENUOUS   EPIGRAMS 

diers,  and  they  were  of  the  very  best  kind, 
and  when  the  need  was  for  citizenship  in 
civil  life  they  showed  us  they  could  give  the 
highest  kind  of  citizenship.  Not  merely 
did  they  give  us  a  reunited  country;  not 
merely  did  they  leave  us  the  memory  of 
the  great  deeds  they  did  to  be  for  ever  after 
an  inspiration  to  us,  but  they  left  us  the 
memory  of  the  way  the  deed  was  done. 


Let  us  resolutely  refuse  to  use  the  knife 
that  will  be  less  dangerous  for  the  disease 
than  the  sufferer. 


While  I  hope  that  as  the  chance  occurs 
each  man  will  get  all  the  fun  he  can  out 
of  life,  remember  that  when  it  comes  not 
merely  to  looking  back  upon  it,  but  to 
living  it,  the  kind  of  life  that  is  worth  liv- 
ing is  the  kind  of  life  that  is  embodied  in 
duty  worth  doing  which  is  well  done. 

28 


STRENUOUS    EPIGRAMS 

Nothing  can  make  good  citizenship  in 
men  who  have  not  got  in  them  courage, 
hardihood,  decency,  sanity,  the  spirit  of 
truth-telling  and  truth-seeking,  the  spirit 
that  dares  and  endures,  the  spirit  that 
knows  what  it  is  to  have  a  lofty  ideal,  and 
yet  to  endeavour  to  realize  that  ideal  in 
practical  fashion. 


Sometimes  each  of  us  has  the  feeling 
that  if  he  has  to  choose  between  the  fool 
and  the  knave  he  will  take  the  knave,  be- 
cause he  can  reform  him  perhaps,  and  he 
cannot  reform  the  fool;  and  even  hardness 
of  heart  is  not  much  more  destructive  in 
the  long  run  than  softness  of  head. 


The  abler  a  man  is  in  his  business,  in 
politics,  in  social  leadership,  the  worse  he  is 
if  he  is  a  scoundrel,  whether  his  scoundrel- 

29 


STRENUOUS   EPIGRAMS 

ism  takes  the  form  of  corruption  in  busi- 
ness, corruption  in  politics,  or  that  most 
sinister  of  all  forms,  the  effort  to  rise  by 
inciting  class  hatred,  by  inciting  lawless- 
ness, by  exciting  the  spirit  of  evil,  the 
spirit  of  jealousy  and  envy  as  between 
man  and  man. 


The  man  who  makes  up  for  ten  days' 
indifference  to  duty  by  an  eleven-days'  mor- 
bid repentance  about  that  indifference  is 
of  scant  use  in  the  world. 


We  need  strong  bodies.  More  than  that 
we  need  strong  minds,  and  finally  we  need 
what  counts  for  more  than  body,  for  more 
than  mind  —  character  —  character,  into 
which  many  elements  enter,  but  three  above 
all.  In  the  first  place,  morality,  decency, 
clean  living,  the  faculty  of  treating  fairly 

30 


STRENUOUS   EPIGRAMS 

those  around  about,  the  qualities  that  make 
a  man  a  decent  husband,  a  decent  father, 
a  good  neighbour,  a  good  man  to  deal  with 
or  to  work  beside;  the  quality  that  makes 
a  man  a  good  citizen  of  the  state,  careful 
to  wrong  no  one;  we  need  that  first  as  the 
foundation,  and  if  we  have  not  got  that,  no 
amount  of  strength  or  courage  or  ability 
can  take  its  place.  No  matter  how  able 
a  man  is,  how  good  a  soldier  naturally,  if 
the  man  were  a  traitor,  then  the  abler  he  was 
the  more  dangerous  he  was  to  the  regi- 
ment, to  the  army,  to  the  nation.  It  is 
so  in  business,  in  politics,  in  every  rela- 
tion of  life.  The  abler  a  man  is,  if  he  is 
a  corrupt  politician,  an  unscrupulous  busi- 
ness man,  a  demagogic  agitator  who  seeks 
to  set  one  portion  of  his  fellow  men  against 
the  other,  his  ability  makes  him  but  by  so 
much  more  a  curse  to  the  community  at 
large.  In  character  we  must  have  virtue, 
morality,  decency,  square  dealing  as  the 
foundation ;  and  it  is  not  enough.  It  is 
only  the  foundation.  In  war  you  needed 
31 


STRENUOUS   EPIGRAMS 

to  have  the  man  decent,  patriotic,  but  no 
matter  how  patriotic  he  was,  if  he  ran  away 
he  was  no  good.  So  it  is  in  citizenship; 
the  virtue  that  stays  at  home  in  its  own 
parlour  and  bemoans  the  wickedness  of  the 
outside  world  is  of  scant  use  to  the  com- 
munity. We  are  a  vigorous,  masterful 
people,  and  the  man  who  is  to  do  good  work 
in  our  country  must  not  only  be  a  good 
man,  but  also  emphatically  a  man.  We 
must  have  the  qualities  of  courage,  of 
hardihood,  of  power  to  hold  one's  own  in 
the  hurly-burly  of  actual  life.  We  must 
have  the  manhood  that  shows  on  fought 
fields  and  that  shows  in  the  work  of  the  busi- 
ness world  and  in  the  struggles  of  civic  life. 
We  must  have  manliness,  courage,  strength, 
resolution,  joined  to  decency  and  morality, 
or  we  shall  make  but  poor  work  of  it. 
Finally,  those  two  qualities  by  themselves 
are  not  enough.  In  addition  to  decency, 
and  courage,  we  must  have  the  saving  grace 
of  common  sense.  We  all  of  us  have  known 
decent  and  valiant  fools  who  have  meant 

32 


STRENUOUS   EPIGRAMS 

so  well  that  it  made  it  all  the  more  pathetic 
that  the  effect  of  their  actions  was  so  ill. 


In  this  country  we  have  room  for  every 
honest  man  who  spends  his  life  in  honest 
effort ;  we  have  no  room  either  for  the  man 
of  means  who,  in  a  spirit  of  arrogant  base- 
ness, looks  down  upon  the  man  less  well 
off,  or  for  the  other  man  who  envies  his 
neighbour  because  that  neighbour  happens 
to  be  better  off.  Either  feeling  is  a  base 
feeling,  unworthy  of  a  self-respecting  man. 


Every  man  of  us  needs  help,  needs 
more  and  more  to  be  given  the  chance  to 
show  forth  in  himself  the  stuff  that  is  in 
him,  and  this  kind  of  free  library  is  doing  in 
the  world  of  cultivation,  the  world  of  civi- 
lization, what  it  should  or  may  do  for  the 
great  world  of  political  and  social  develop- 

33 


STRENUOUS   EPIGRAMS 

ment ;  that  is,  it  is,  as  far  as  may  be,  equal- 
izing the  opportunities  and  then  leaving  the 
men  themselves  to  show  how  able  they  are 
to  take  advantage  of  those  opportunities. 


If  you  use  envy  in  the  ordinary  sense 
of  the  word,  its  existence  implies  a  feeling 
of  inferiority  in  the  man  who  feels  it,  a 
feeling  that  a  self-respecting  man  will  be 
ashamed  to  have. 


In  our  life  what  we  need  is  not  so  much 
genius,  not  so  much  brilliancy  as  the  or- 
dinary common  place  every-day  qualities 
which  a  man  needs  in  private  life,  and 
which  he  needs  just  as  much  in  public  life. 


It  is  rare,  indeed,  that  a  great  work,  a 
work  supremely  worth  doing,  can  be  done 

34 


STRENUOUS    EPIGRAMS 

save  at  the  cost  not  only  of  labour  and 
toil,  but  of  much  puzzling  worry  during 
the  time  of  the  performance. 


Any  generation  fit  to  do  its  work  must 
work  for  the  future,  for  the  people  of  the 
future,  as  well  as  for  itself. 


Mankind  goes  ahead  but  slowly,  and 
it  goes  ahead  mainly  through  each  of  us 
trying  to  do,  or  at  least  through  each  of 
the  majority  of  us  trying  to  do,  the  best 
that  is  in  him,  and  to  do  it  in  the  most 
intelligent  and  sanest  way. 

We  have  founded  our  republic  on  the 
theory  that  the  average  man  will  as  a  rule 
do  the  right  thing,  that  in  the  long  run  the 
majority  is  going  to  decide  by  what  is  sane 
and  wholesome. 

If   our   fathers   were   mistaken    in   that 

35 


STRENUOUS   EPIGRAMS 

theory,  if  through  events  becoming  such 
that  not  occasionally  but  persistently  the 
mass  of  the  people  do  what  is  unwhole- 
some, what  is  wrong,  then  the  republic 
cannot  stand,  I  care  not  how  good  its  laws, 
I  care  not  in  what  marvellous  mechanism 
its  constitution  may  be  embodied. 

Back  of  the  laws,  back  of  the  adminis- 
tration, back  of  our  system  of  govern- 
ment lies  the  man,  lies  the  average  man- 
hood of  our  people,  and  in  the  long  run 
we  are  going  to  go  up  or  are  going  to  go 
down,  accordingly  as  the  average  stand- 
ard of  our  citizenship  does  or  does  not  wax 
in  growth  and  grace. 


Neither  you  nor  any  one  else  can  make 
a  man  wise  or  cultivate  him.  All  you  can 
do  is  to  give  him  a  chance  to  make  himself, 
to  add  to  his  own  wisdom  or  his  own  cul- 
tivation, and  that  is  all  you  can  do  in  any 
kind  of  genuine  philanthropic  work.  The 

36 


STRENUOUS    EPIGRAMS 

only  philanthropic  work  is  work  that  helps 
a  man  to  help  himself.  This  is  true  in  every 
way,  socially  and  sociologically.  The  man 
who  will  submit  or  demand  to  be  carried  is 
not  worth  carrying. 


It  is  a  good  thing  to  be  a  good  half- 
back, but  it  is  a  mighty  bad  thing  if  at 
forty  all  you  can  say  of  a  man  is  that  he 
was  a  good  half-back. 


Exactly  as  infinitely  the  happiest 
woman  is  she  who  has  born  and  brought 
up  many  healthy  children,  so  infinitely  the 
happiest  man  is  he  who  has  toiled  hard  and 
successfully  in  his  life-work. 


There  are  two  attributes  of  which  as  a 
people  we  need  to  beware  more  than  of  any 
37 


STRENUOUS    EPIGRAMS 

others  —  the  arrogance  which  looks  down 
on  those  not  so  well  off,  and  treats  them 
with  brutal  and  selfish  disregard  for  their 
interests,  and  the  equally  base  spirit  of 
hatred  and  rancour  for  those  that  are  better 
off. 


If  you  haven't  got  it  in  you  to  feel  most 
proud  of  the  times  when  you  work,  I  think 
very  little  of  you. 


The  millennium  is  a  good  way  off  yet. 


We  cannot  be  dragged  up,  we  have  got 
to  push  ourselves  up.  No  law  that  ever 
was  devised  can  give  wisdom  to  the  fool, 
courage  to  the  coward,  strength  to  the 
weakling.  We  must  have  those  qualities 

38 


STRENUOUS    EPIGRAMS 

in  us,  for  if  they  are  not  in  us  they  cannot 
be  gotten  out  of  us. 


I  wish  to  see  the  average  American  take 
in  reference  to  his  fellows  the  attitude  that 
I  wish  to  see  America  take  among  the  na- 
tions of  the  world :  the  attitude  of  one  who 
scorns  equally  to  flinch  from  injustice  by 
the  strong  and  to  do  injustice  to  the  weak. 

You  fought  for  liberty  under  the  law, 
not  liberty  in  spite  of  the  law.  Any  man 
who  claims  that  there  can  be  liberty  in  spite 
"of  and  against  the  law  is  claiming  that 
anarchy  is  liberty.  From  the  beginning 
of  time  anarchy  in  all  its  forms  has  been  the 
handmaiden,  the  harbinger,  of  despotism 
and  tyranny. 


Woe  will  beset  this  country  if  we  draw 
lines  of  distinction  between  class  and  class, 
39 


STRENUOUS   EPIGRAMS 

or  creed  and  creed,  or  along  any  other 
line  save  that  which  divides  good  citizen- 
ship from  bad  citizenship. 

I  think  that  the  average  American  is 
a  decent  fellow,  and  that  the  prime  thing 
in  getting  him  to  get  on  well  with  the  other 
average  American  is  to  have  each  remember 
that  the  other  is  a  decent  fellow,  and  try 
to  look  at  the  problems  a  little  from  the 
other's  standpoint. 


I  would  like  to  be  President  again,  but  I 
would  far  rather  be  a  whole  President  for 
three  years,  than  half  a  President  for  seven 
years.  Remember  that! 


I  would  plead  with  my  countrymen  to 
show  not  any  special  brilliancy,  or  special 

40 


STRENUOUS    EPIGRAMS 

genius,  but  the  ordinary  humdrum,  com- 
monplace qualities  which,  in  the  aggregate, 
spell  success  for  the  nation,  and  spell  suc- 
cess for  the  individual. 


Far  more  important,  by  far,  than  any 
question  of  mere  political  expediency  or 
wisdom,  is  the  question  of  our  success 
as  a  nation  of  home-makers  in  the  deepest 
and  truest  sense  of  the  word. 

If  the  average  American  home  is  such  in 
fact  as  well  as  in  name,  if  it  contains  plenty 
of  healthy  children,  who  are  being  brought 
up  to  be  good  citizens,  we  need  have  scant 
fear  about  the  future. 


Courage  and  loyalty,  the  stern  determi- 
nation to  do  exact  justice,  the  high  pur- 
pose to  struggle  for  the  right,  and  the 
common  sense  to  struggle  for  it  in  practical 

41 


STRENUOUS   EPIGRAMS 

fashion  —  all  these  qualities  we  must  show 
now,  in  our  civil  and  social  and  business 
life,  as  you  showed  them  when,  in  the  days 
of  your  youth  and  lusty  strength,  you 
marched  forth,  an  army  with  banners,  and 
brought  back  the  peace  that  comes,  not  to 
the  weakling  and  the  craven,  but  to  those 
whose  proud  eyes  tell  of  triumph  tasted. 


To  quote  an  expression  that  I  am  fond 
of,  this  sort  of  gift  (a  public  library)  is 
equally  far  from  two  prime  vices  of  our 
civilization,  hardness  of  heart,  and  softness 
of  head. 


I  believe,  not  in  brilliancy,  not  in  genius, 
I  believe  in  the  ordinary,  humdrum,  work- 
aday virtues  that  make  a  man  a  good  man 
in  his  family,  a  good  neighbour,  a  good 
man  to  deal  with  in  business,  a  good  man  to 

42 


STRENUOUS   EPIGRAMS 

deal  with  in  the  state,  and  when  you  have 
got  a  man  with  those  characteristics  in 
him,  you  have  a  man  who,  if  the  need  comes, 
will  rise  level  to  that  need. 


The  well-being  of  the  tiller  of  the  soil 
and  the  wage-worker  is  the  well-being  of 
the  state. 


Get  all  the  enjoyment  you  legitimately 
can  out  of  life,  but  remember  that  the  only 
sure  way  of  getting,  in  the  end,  no  enjoy- 
ment out  of  life,  is  to  start  in  to  make  it 
the  end  of  your  existence. 


It  seems  to  me  that  the  man  has  a  right 
to  call  himself  thrice  blessed  who  has  in 
him  the  combined  power  and  purpose  to  use 

43 


STRENUOUS   EPIGRAMS 

his  wealth  for  the  benefit  of  all  the  people 
at  large,  in  a  way  that  can  do  them  real 
benefit,  and  in  no  way  can  more  benefit  be 
done,  than  through  the  gift  of  libraries, 
such  as  this. 


No  prosperity  and  no  glory  can  save  the 
nation  that  is  rotten  at  heart.  We  must 
keep  the  core  of  our  national  being  sound, 
and  see  to  it  that  not  only  our  citizens,  but, 
above  all,  our  statesmen  in  public  life,  prac- 
tise the  old,  commonplace  virtues  which, 
from  time  immemorial,  have  lain  at  the 
root  of  all  true  national  well-being. 


Now  it  is  of  no  possible  use  to  decline 
to  go  through  all  the  ordinary  duties  of 
citizenship  for  a  long  space  of  time,  and 
then  suddenly  to  get  up  and  feel  very  angry 
about  something  or  somebody,  not  clearly 

44 


STRENUOUS   EPIGRAMS 

defined  in  one's  mind,  and  demand  reform, 
as  if  it  was  a  concrete  substance  that  could 
be  handed  out  forthwith. 


We  must  all  either  wear  out  or  rust  out, 
every  one  of  us.    My  choice  is  to  wear  out. 


The  best  institutions  are  no  good  if  they 
won't  work.  I  do  not  care  how  beautiful 
a  theory  is.  If  it  won't  fit  in  with  the  facts, 
it  is  no  good.  If  you  build  the  handsom- 
est engine,  and  it  won't  go,  its  usefulness 
would  be  limited. 


Every  father  and  mother  here,  if  they 
are  wise,  will  bring  up  their  children  not 
to  shirk  difficulties,  but  to  meet  them,  and 
overcome  them,  not  to  strive  after  a  life  of 

45 


STRENUOUS   EPIGRAMS 

ignoble  ease,  but  to  strive  to  do  their  duty, 
first  to  themselves  and  their  families,  and 
then  to  the  whole  state,  and  this  duty  must 
inevitably  take  the  shape  of  work  in  some 
form  or  other. 


Our  country  has  been  populated  by  pio- 
neers, and,  therefore,  it  has  in  it  more 
energy,  more  enterprise,  more  expansive 
power  than  any  other  in  the  world. 


Remember  that  the  chance  to  do  the  great 
heroic  work  may  or  may  not  come.  If  it 
does  not  come,  then  all  that  there  can  be  to 
our  credit  is  the  faithful  performance  of 
every-day  duty.  That  is  all  that  most  of 
us,  throughout  our  lives,  have  the  chance 
to  do,  and  it  is  enough,  because  it  is  the 
beginning  to  do,  because  it  means  most  for 
the  nation  when  done,  and  if  the  time  for 

46 


STRENUOUS    EPIGRA^IS 

the  showing  of  heroism  does  corpiyidual  man 
guarantee  that  those  who  sh$eight>  to  eam 
likely  to  be  the  people  who^  Qn  the  CQm_ 
duty  m  average  times,  adual  who  wantg  to 
doing  the  duty  arose.  flt  in  1If  e?  but  who  wiu 

_s  his  own  way  in  life,  is 
•^          .nuch  use  in  the  world.    He 

se  admirable  creatures  who, 
I  came  fro*g5j    were  willing  to  begin  as 

proudest  b,enerals  We  must  have  first 
to  the  me;  to  do  well  in  the  day  of  small 
spondedthe  day  through  which  all  of  us 
hour  03asgj  ^e  day  which  lasts  very  long 
t  W1^most  of  us. 


I  do  not  care  how  moral  a  man  is,  and 
how  brave  he  is,  if  he  is  a  natural-born  fool, 
you  can  do  nothing  with  him.  I  ask,  then, 
for  decency  as  the  foundation,  for  cour- 
age and  manliness  thereon,  and  finally,  in 
addition  to  both,  I  ask  for  common  sense 
as  the  moderator  and  guide  of  both. 

49 


S-TRENUOUS   EPIGRAMS 

ignoble  east/    js  no  iess  true  that  there  is 
first  to  themscn  the  world  at  large  for  the 
then  to  the  who^hty  thews,  that  dares  not 
inevitably  take  thi 
form  or  other. 


iy  one  can  live, 

Our  country  has  been  popu..-ire,  is  the  life 
neers,   and,   therefore,   it   has   i  its  end  and 
energy,   more   enterprise,   more 
power  than  any  other  in  the  worl 


Remember  that  the  chance  to  do  the  grea00 
heroic  work  may  or  may  not  come.  If  it 
does  not  come,  then  all  that  there  can  be  to 
our  credit  is  the  faithful  performance  of 
every-day  duty.  That  is  all  that  most  of 
us,  throughout  our  lives,  have  the  chance 
to  do,  and  it  is  enough,  because  it  is  the 
beginning  to  do,  because  it  means  most  for 
the  nation  when  done,  and  if  the  time  for 

46 


STRENUOUS    EPIGRAMS 

The  first  thing  that  the  individual  man 
has  to  do  is  to  pull  his  own  weight,  to  earn 
his  own  way,  not  to  be  a  drag  on  the  com- 
munity. And  the  individual  who  wants  to 
do  a  tremendous  amount  in  life,  but  who  will 
not  start  by  earning  his  own  way  in  life,  is 
not  apt  to  be  of  much  use  in  the  world.  He 
is  akin  to  those  admirable  creatures  who, 
from  '61  to  '65,  were  willing  to  begin  as 
brigadier- generals.  We  must  have  first 
the  desire  to  do  well  in  the  day  of  small 
things,  the  day  through  which  all  of  us 
must  pass,  the  day  which  lasts  very  long 
with  most  of  us. 


I  do  not  care  how  moral  a  man  is,  and 
how  brave  he  is,  if  he  is  a  natural-born  fool, 
you  can  do  nothing  with  him.  I  ask,  then, 
for  decency  as  the  foundation,  for  cour- 
age and  manliness  thereon,  and  finally,  in 
addition  to  both,  I  ask  for  common  sense 
as  the  moderator  and  guide  of  both. 

49 


STRENUOUS   EPIGRAMS 

Character  has  two  sides.  It  is  composed 
of  two  sets  of  traits ;  in  the  first  place,  the 
set  of  traits  which  we  group  together  under 
such  names  as  clean  living,  decency,  mo- 
rality, virtue,  the  desire  and  power  to  deal 
fairly  each  by  his  neighbour,  each  by 
his  friends,  each  toward  the  state;  that 
we  have  to  have  as  fundamental.  In  addi- 
tion, you  must  have  hardihood,  resolution, 
courage,  the  power  to  do,  the  power  to 
dare,  the  power  to  endure,  and  when  you 
have  that  combination,  then  you  get  the 
proper  type  of  American  citizenship. 


The  worth  of  a  promise  consists  purely 
in  the  way  in  which  the  performance  squares 
with  it.  That  has  got  two  sides  to  it.  In 
the  first  place,  if  the  man  is  an  honest  man, 
he  will  try  just  as  hard  to  keep  a  promise 
made  on  the  stump  as  one  made  off  the 
stump.  In  the  second  place,  if  a  people 
keep  their  heads,  they  will  not  wish  prom- 

50 


STRENUOUS   EPIGRAMS 

ises  to  be  made  which  are  impossible  of 
performance. 


Sometimes  we  hear  those  who  do  not  work 
spoken  of  with  envy;  surely  the  wilfully 
idle  need  arouse  in  the  breast  of  a  healthy 
man  no  emotion  stronger  than  that  of  con- 
tempt —  at  the  outside  no  emotion  stronger 
than  angry  contempt. 


I  want  to  see  a  man  take  his  own  part. 
If  he  will  not,  his  part  is  not  worth  taking. 
But,  on  the  other  hand,  I  have  greatest 
contempt  for  a  man  who  is  always  walking 
about  wanting  to  pick  a  quarrel,  or  want- 
ing to  say  something  unpleasant  about 
some  one  else. 

The  fact  that  he  talks  loud  does  not 
mean,  necessarily,  that  he  fights  hard, 
either.  Sometimes  you  see  a  man  that  will 

51 


STRENUOUS    EPIGRAMS 

talk  loud  and  fight  hard,  but  he  does  not 
fight  hard  because  he  talks  loud,  but  in 
spite  of  it. 


Good,  not  harm,  normally  comes  from  the 
piling  up  of  wealth  through  business  enter- 
prises. Probably  the  most  serious  harm 
resulting  to  us,  the  people  of  moderate 
means,  is  when  we  harm  ourselves  by  letting 
the  dark  and  evil  vices  of  envy  and  hatred 
toward  our  fellows  eat  into  our  natures. 


Now,  in  the  navy  you  have  got  to  have 
ships  and  good  guns ;  but  if  you  have  not 
got  anything  else,  the  ships  and  the  guns 
are  worthless. 

You  have  got  to  have  a  man  behind  the 
guns,  the  man  in  the  engine-room.  That 
is  what  counts ;  that  is  what  made  the  dif- 
ference at  Manila  and  Santiago.  There 

52 


STRENUOUS    EPIGRAMS 

was  a  difference  in  the  ships,  too;  but  the 
great  difference  was  in  the  men.  And  no 
kind  of  patent  device  on  board  any  ship 
will  take  the  place  of  cool,  intelligent,  and 
hardy  courage  in  the  officers  and  enlisted 
men. 

So,  exactly  as  you  need  in  war  the  man 
behind  the  gun,  you  need  in  peace  the  man 
behind  the  plough,  the  man  at  the  machine. 
It  is  on  him  that  our  success  ultimately 
depends. 


When  vou  make  it  evident  that  no  man 

v 

shall  be  excused  from  violating  the  law, 
you  make  it  evident  that  every  man  will  be 
protected  from  violators  of  the  law. 


jf>  &>  &> 

Remember  that  every  man,  at  times, 
stumbles,  and  must  be  helped  up ;  if  he  lies 
down  you  cannot  carry  him.  He  has  got 

53 


STRENUOUS   EPIGRAMS 

to  be  willing  to  walk.  You  can  help  him 
in  but  one  way,  the  only  way  in  which  any 
man  can  be  helped  permanently  —  help  him 
to  help  himself. 


In  the  individual,  nothing  can  take  the 
place  of  his  own  qualities;  in  the  commu- 
nity, nothing  can  take  the  place  of  the  qual- 
ities of  the  average  citizen. 


Brilliancy,  genius,  cleverness  of  all  kinds, 
do  not  count  for  anything  like  as  much  as 
the  sturdy  traits  that  we  group  together 
under  the  name  of  character. 


The  men  who  won  in  the  Revolution,  and 
made  this  country  take  its  place  among  the 
nations  of  the  earth,  did  it  because  they 

54 


STRENUOUS   EPIGRAMS 

had  in  them  courage,  resolution,  integrity, 
unbending  will,  and  common  sense. 


Abraham  Lincoln  —  the  spirit  incarnate 
of  those  who  won  victory  in  the  Civil  War 
—  was  the  true  representative  of  this  peo- 
ple, not  only  for  his  own  generation,  but  for 
all  time,  because  he  was  a  man  among  men, 
a  man  who  embodied  the  qualities  of  his 
fellow  men,  but  who  embodied  them  to  the 
highest,  and  the  most  unusual  degree  of 
perfection,  who  embodied  all  that  there 
was  in  the  nation  of  courage,  of  wisdom, 
of  gentle,  patient  kindliness,  and  of  com- 
mon sense. 

And  great,  sad,  patient  Lincoln  led  us 
to  victory  from  '61  to  '65  because  he  did 
not  trust  to  any  mere  trick  or  device,  be- 
cause he  drove  deep  down  to  the  heart  of 
thousands,  and  based  his  reliance  on  the 
fundamental  virtues  of  mankind  —  the  old, 
old  virtues  of  mankind. 

55 


STRENUOUS    EPIGRAMS 

That  is  the  spirit  we  have  to  show  in  fac- 
ing the  problems  of  to-day.  If  we  ap- 
proach those  problems  in  a  spirit  of 
hysteria,  we  will  fail,  as  we  well  deserve 
to  fail ;  if  we  approach  them  in  a  spirit  of 
envy  and  rancour  and  malice  toward  our 
fellows,  we  will  not  only  fail,  but  we  will 
drag  them  and  us  in  a  common  ruin. 

Shame  to  us  if  we  blink  the  evils !  They 
are  there.  Shame  to  us  if  we  fear  to 
face  the  problem!  It  is  there,  and  to 
say  that  it  is  not  there  will  not  prove  its 
absence. 

Face  the  problem;  realize  its  gravity, 
and  then  approach  it  in  a  spirit,  not  merely 
of  determination  to  solve  it,  but  of  hearty 
desire  to  solve  it  with  justice  to  all,  with 
malice  to  none;  to  solve  it  in  a  spirit  of 
broad  kindliness  and  charity,  in  a  spirit 
that  will  keep  us  ever  in  mind  that  if  we  are 
to  succeed  at  all,  it  must  be  by  each  doing, 
to  the  best  of  his  capacity,  his  own  business, 
and  yet  by  each  remembering  that  in  a 
sense  he  is  also  his  brother's  keeper. 

56 


STRENUOUS    EPIGRAMS 

Success  comes  only  to  those  who  lead  the 
life  of  endeavour.  The  man  who  works, 
the  man  who  does  great  deeds,  in  the  end 
dies,  as  surely  as  the  veriest  idler  who  cum- 
bers the  earth's  surface,  but  he  leaves  be- 
hind him  the  great  fact  that  he  has  done  his 
work  well. 


The  able,  fearless,  unscrupulous  man, 
who  is  not  guided  by  the  law,  is  a  curse,  to 
be  hunted  down  like  a  civic  wild  beast,  and 
his  ability  and  his  courage,  whether  in  busi- 
ness, in  politics,  or  anywhere  else,  only 
serve  to  make  him  more  dangerous  and  a 
greater  curse. 


Timid  people,  people  scant  of  faith  and 
hope,  and  good  people,  who  are  not  ac- 
customed to  the  roughness  of  the  life  of 
effort,  are  almost  sure  to  be  disheartened 

57 


STRENUOUS    EPIGRAMS 

and  dismayed  by  the  work  and  the  worry, 
and  overmuch  cast  down  by  the  shortcom- 
ings, actual  or  seeming,  which,  in  real  life, 
always  accompany  the  first  stages  even  of 
what  eventually  turn  out  to  be  the  most 
brilliant  victories. 


I  want  to  see  the  average  American  citi- 
zen be  in  the  future,  as  he  has  been  in  the 
past,  a  decent  man,  doing  no  wrong,  and, 
on  the  other  hand,  able  to  hold  his  own  also. 


If  there  is  any  one  quality  which  is  not 
admirable,  whether  in  a  nation  or  in  an 
individual,  it  is  hysterics,  either  in  religion 
or  in  anything  else. 


I  would  teach  the  young  men  that  he 
who  has  not  wealth  owes  his  first  duty  to 

58 


STRENUOUS    EPIGRAMS 

his  family,  while  he  who  has  means  owes 
his  to  the  state.  It  is  ignoble  to  go  on 
heaping  money  on  money.  I  would  preach 
the  doctrine  of  work  to  all,  and  to  men  of 
wealth  the  doctrine  of  unremunerative 
work. 

j*  Jt,  jt 

I  do  not  believe  in  a  bluff.  I  feel  about 
a  nation  as  we  all  feel  about  a  man;  let 
him  not  say  anything  that  he  cannot  make 
good,  and  having  said  it,  let  him  make  it 
good. 


It  is  pleasant  to  learn  by  an  experience 
which  teaches  us  what  to  follow  instead  of 
what  to  avoid. 


When  I  address  an  audience  like  this, 
which  takes  part  itself  in  all  the  workings 
of  the  government,  I  do  not  have  to  ex- 

59 


STRENUOUS    EPIGRAMS 

plain,  as  I  have  to  explain  to  some  other 
audiences,  that  the  government  cannot  do 
everything. 

You  can  do  a  good  deal  through  the 
town,  but  you  can  do  a  great  deal  more  for 
the  town  than  the  town  can  do  for  you. 
And  some  of  our  people  make  the  mistake 
of  thinking  you  can  work  that,  but  you 
cannot. 


We  need  in  our  public  life,  as  in  our 
private  life,  the  virtues  that  every  one 
could  practise  if  he  would.  We  need  the 
will  to  practise  them.  There  are  two  kinds 
of  greatness  that  can  be  achieved.  There 
is  the  greatness  that  comes  to  the  man  who 
can  do  what  no  one  else  can  do.  That  is 
a  mighty  rare  kind,  and,  of  course,  it  can 
only  be  achieved  by  the  man  of  special  and 
unusual  qualities. 

Then  there  is  the  other  kind  that  comes 
to  the  man  who  does  the  things  that  every 
one  could  do,  but  that  every  one  does  not 

60 


STRENUOUS    EPIGRAMS 

do.  Who  goes  ahead  and  does  them  him- 
self. To  do  that,  you  first  of  all  have  got 
to  school  yourself  to  do  the  ordinary,  com- 
monplace things. 


There  has  never  yet  been  a  man  in  our 
history  who  led  a  life  of  ease  whose  name 
is  worth  remembering. 

Now,  understand  me.  Take  holidays.  I 
believe  in  holidays.  I  believe  in  play,  and 
I  believe  in  playing  hard  while  you  play, 
but  don't  make  a  business  of  it. 

Do  your  work,  and  do  it  up  to  the  handle, 
and  then  play  when  you  have  got  time  to 
play,  and,  if  you  are  worth  anything,  en- 
joy that  too. 


Now  what  is  true  of  the  individual  is 
true  of  the  nation.  The  heroic  times  in 
this  nation's  career  were  when  it  had  great 

61 


STRENUOUS   EPIGRAMS 

work  to  do,  and,  instead  of  flinching  from 
the  work,  did  it,  and  it  did  that  heroic 
work  in  part  because,  at  the  hour  of  need, 
it  showed  it  possessed  heroic  virtues,  the 
heroic  virtues  that  a  great  and  generous 
nation  must  show  and  will  show  in  the  crises 
of  its  history ;  and  also  because,  in  addition 
to  the  heroic  virtues,  which  can  be  used  but 
once  in  a  generation,  it  had  those  common- 
place, humdrum,  every-day  virtues  which 
save  us  year  in  and  year  out,  and  if  we  do 
not  have  those  virtues,  if  we  do  not  have 
those  qualities,  you  can  guarantee  that  when 
the  hour  calls  for  heroism  we  won't  have 
that  either. 

There  is  need  to  do  all  the  ordinary, 
commonplace  duties  as  they  arise,  or  we 
will  be  in  no  shape  to  meet  the  crisis  that 
calls  for  heroism  when  that  crisis  arises. 


Now  you,  representatives   of  the  great 
war,  who  are  here  to-day,  when  you  went 

62 


STRENUOUS   EPIGRAMS 

out  from  '61  to  '65,  the  men  by  whose  sides 
you  fought  had  to  have  certain  traits. 

No  one  trait  was  enough.  They  had 
to  be  patriotic  in  the  first  place.  They 
had  to  be  driven  onward  by  a  love  for  coun- 
try that  made  them  willing  to  spend  the 
best  years  of  their  youth  and  early  man- 
hood in  the  service  of  the  nation  to  their 
own  detriment;  that  made  them  willing 
to  stake  all  life  itself  for  the  great  prize 
of  death  in  battle,  for  the  honour  of  the 
flag.  You  had  to  have  that  spirit  first. 

You  had  to  have  more  than  that.  I 
do  not  care  how  patriotic  a  man  was,  if 
he  had  a  tendency  to  run  away  he  was 
no  good.  Besides  the  love  of  country  you 
had  to  have,  to  make  a  good  soldier,  a 
strong,  virile  purpose  in  the  man,  eager- 
ness to  do  his  work  as  a  man.  He  had  to 
have  courage,  strength,  fixity  of  resolu- 
tion. 

It  was  not  all  victory.  You  met  de- 
feats, and  the  man  who  after  defeat 
thought  he  would  go  home  was  of  no  use. 

63 


STRENUOUS   EPIGRAMS 

You  had  to  have  the  man  who  after  defeat 
would  come  up  and  try  again,  and  if  he 
was  defeated  again,  come  up  and  try  again 
until  he  wrested  from  defeat  the  splendid 
ultimate  triumph.  The  men  who  are  going 
to  do  good  work  for  citizenship  in  this 
community  are  the  men  who  approach  its 
duties  in  the  spirit,  sirs,  that  you  ap- 
proached yours  in  the  time  of  the  Civil 
War,  who  are  not  going  to  expect  every- 
thing to  be  done  for  them,  but  who  are 
going  to  do  their  share  of  it ;  who  are  not 
going  to  expect  the  way  to  be  easy  and 
smooth,  for  the  path  of  national  greatness 
never  is  easy  or  smooth,  but  who  are  going 
to  face  the  rough  work  of  the  world  with 
the  determination  to  do  that  work  aright. 


A  government  can  do  something;  it 
can  do  a  good  deal;  but  it  can  never  be- 
gin to  do  as  much  for  the  individual  as 
the  individual  can  do  for  the  government. 

64 


STRENUOUS    EPIGRAMS 

I  think  there  is  only  one  quality  worse 
than  hardness  of  heart,  and  that  is  softness 
of  head. 

Now  let  each  man  here  look  back  in 
his  life  and  think  what  it  is  that  he  is 
proud  of  in  it  —  what  part  of  it  he  is  glad 
to  hand  on  as  a  memory  to  his  sons  and 
daughters. 

Is  it  his  hours  of  ease?  No,  not  a  bit. 
It  is  the  memory  of  his  success,  of  his 
triumph,  and  the  triumph  and  the  success 
could  only  come  through  effort. 

Is  that  not  true?  Let  each  one  think 
for  himself.  Look  back  in  your  career, 
and  if  you  have  not  got  it  in  you  to  feel 
most  proud  of  the  time  when  you  worked, 
I  think  but  little  of  you. 


In  this  life,  as  a  rule,  the  j  ob  that  is  easy 
to  do  is  not  very  well  worth  while  doing. 

65 


STRENUOUS   EPIGRAMS 

In  life  what  counts  as  the  chief  factor 
in  the  success  of  a  man  or  a  woman  is 
character,  and  character  is  partly  inborn 
and  partly  developed ;  partly  developed 
by  the  man's  individual  will,  the  woman's 
individual  will,  partly  developed  by  the 
wise  training  of  those  above  the  young 
man  or  young  woman,  the  boy  or  the  girl, 
partly  developed  by  the  myriad  associa- 
tions of  life. 


Speaking  broadly,  prosperity  must,  of 
necessity,  come  to  all  of  us  or  to  none  of 
us ;  of  course  there  are  sporadic  excep- 
tions, individual  and  local. 

It  is,  in  the  long  run,  the  man  that 
counts.  Just  exactly  as  in  war,  though 
you  have  got  to  have  the  best  weapons, 
yet  they  are  useless  if  the  men  behind  them 

66 


STRENUOUS    EPIGRAMS 

don't  handle  them  well ;  so  in  peace,  the 
best  constitution,  the  best  legislation,  the 
greatest  natural  advantages  will  avail 
nothing  if  you  have  not  the  right  type 
of  citizenship  to  take  advantage  of  them. 


Above  all,  gentlemen,  let  us  remember 
that  bad  laws  and  bad  administration  can 
completely  nullify  all  efforts  for  good 
upon  the  part  of  the  private  citizen. 

About  all  we  have  a  right  to  expect  from 
government  is  that  it  will  see  that  the 
cards  are  not  stacked,  and  if  it  sees  to 
that,  then  we  will  abide  by  the  deal. 


Every  one  who  thinks,  knows  that  the 
only  way  in  which  any  problem  of  great 
importance  was  ever  successfully  solved 
was  by  constant  and  persistent  effort 
toward  a  given  end  —  effort  that  did  not 

67 


STRENUOUS   EPIGRAMS 

end  with  any  one  election  or  with  any  one 
year,  but  that  was  continued  steadily,  tem- 
perately, but  resolutely,  toward  a  given 
end. 

&  Jk  jfc 

Strength  of  any  kind,  physical,  mental, 
is  but  a  source  of  danger  if  it  is  not 
guided  aright.  On  the  other  hand,  it  is 
just  as  important  for  every  man  or  woman, 
who  is  striving  for  decency,  to  keep  ever  in 
mind  the  further  fact  that  unless  there 
is  power,  efficiency,  behind  the  effort  for 
decency,  scant  is  the  good  that  will  come. 


Good  fortune  does  not  come  only  to  the 
good,  nor  bad  fortune  only  to  the  unjust. 
When  the  weather  is  good  for  crops  it  is 
also  good  for  weeds ;  moreover,  not  only 
do  the  wicked  flourish,  when  the  times  are 
such  that  most  men  flourish,  but  what  is 
worse,  the  spirit  of  envy  and  jealousy  and 

68 


STRENUOUS    EPIGRAMS 

hatred  springs  up  in  the  breasts  of  those 
who,  though  they  may  be  doing  fairly  well 
themselves,  yet  see  others,  who  are  no 
more  deserving,  doing  far  better. 


Normally,  the  nation  that  achieves 
greatness,  like  the  individual  who  achieves 
greatness,  can  do  so  only  at  the  cost  of 
anxiety  and  bewilderment  and  heart- 
wearing  effort. 


It  is  a  good  thing  for  a  nation  to  de- 
mand in  its  representatives  intellect,  but 
it  is  a  better  thing  to  demand  in  them  that 
sum  of  qualities  which  we  talk  of  as  char- 
acter. 

If  you  are  dealing  with  a  man  in  a 
business  way,  whether  as  employer  or 
employee,  or  in  commerce  with  a  store- 
keeper, or  with  any  one,  you  want  him  to 

69 


STRENUOUS    EPIGRAMS 

be  a  smart  man,  but  it  is  a  mighty  bad 
thing  if  he  is  only  smart. 


I  would  not  preach  to  any  man  the  life 
of  ease,  the  life  of  safety  only.  Instead 
of  the  life  of  ease  I  preach,  to  all  worthy 
to  be  called  men,  the  life  of  work,  the  life 
of  endeavour,  and  instead  of  the  life  of 
safety  I  preach  the  doctrine  that  teaches  us 
now,  as  it  taught  the  men  of  the  Civil  War, 
that  there  are  times  when  safety  is  the  last 
thing  to  be  considered. 


A  free  library,  where  each  man,  each 
woman,  has  the  chance  to  get  for  himself 
or  herself  the  training  that  he  has  the 
character  to  desire  and  to  acquire.  Now, 
of  course,  our  common  school  system  lies 
at  the  foundation  of  our  educational  sys- 
tem,, but  it  is  the  foundation  only.  The 

70 


STRENUOUS    EPIGRAMS 

men  that  are  to  stand  preeminent  as  the 
representatives  of  the  culture  of  the  com- 
munity must  educate  themselves. 


I  pity  no  man  because  he  has  to  work. 
If  he  is  worth  his  salt,  he  will  work.  I 
envy  the  man  who  has  a  work  worth  doing 
and  does  it  well. 


You  can  pardon  most  anything  in  a 
man  who  will  tell  the  truth,  because  you 
know  where  that  man  is;  you  know  what 
he  means.  If  any  one  lies,  if  he  has  the 
habit  of  untruthfulness,  you  cannot  deal 
with  him,  because  there  is  nothing  to  de- 
pend on.  You  cannot  tell  what  can  be 
done  with  him  or  by  his  aid.  Truth-tell- 
ing is  a  virtue  upon  which  we  should  not 
only  insist  in  the  schools  and  at  home,  but 
in  business  and  in  politics  just  as  much. 

71 


STRENUOUS   EPIGRAMS 

The  business  man  or  politician  who  does 
not  tell  the  truth,  cheats ;  and  for  the  cheat 
we  should  have  no  use  in  any  walk  of  life. 


About  the  worst  quality  you  can  have 
in  a  soldier  is  hysterics,  or  anything  ap- 
proaching it,  and  it  is  pretty  nearly  the 
worst  quality  in  civil  life.  We  need  in 
civil  life  the  plain,  practical,  every-day 
virtues,  which  all  of  us  admit  in  theory 
to  be  necessary,  and  when  we  all  practise 
them  we  will  come  mighty  near  making 
a  state  perfect. 


The  man  who  has  not  got  great  tasks 
to  do  cannot  achieve  greatness.  Greatness 
only  comes  because  the  task  to  be  done  is 
great.  The  men  who  lead  lives  of  mere 
ease,  of  mere  pleasure,  the  men  who  go 
through  life  seeking  how  to  avoid  trouble, 

72 


STRENUOUS    EPIGRAMS 

to  avoid  risk,  to  avoid  effort,  to  them  it 
is  not  given  to  achieve  greatness.  Great- 
ness comes  only  to  those  who  seek  not  how 
to  avoid  obstacles,  but  how  to  overcome 
them. 


I  believe  in  work,  and  I  believe  in  play. 
I  would  be  sorry  not  to  see  you  enjoy 
yourselves,  but  do  not  let  play  interfere 
with  work.  Do  things  quietly  and  care- 
fully. Boys,  remember  the  manlier  you 
wish  to  be,  the  nicer  you  can  afford  to  be 
at  home.  I  would  be  ashamed  of  a  boy 
who  was  a  bully  to  the  weak.  When  you 
play,  be  fair,  but  play  hard,  and  then 
work  hard  at  your  studies.  If  you  get 
hurt,  keep  on  playing.  Work  with  your 
whole  heart  in  all  things. 


There  never  has  been  devised,  and  there 
never  will  be  devised,  any  law  which  will 
73 


STRENUOUS    EPIGRAMS 

enable  a  man  to  succeed  save  by  the  exer- 
cise of  those  qualities  which  have  always 
been  the  prerequisites  of  success,  the  qual- 
ities of  hard  work,  of  keen  intelligence,  of 
unflinching  will. 

Laws  are  good  things,  but  they  are  only 
the  implements  with  which  the  men  who 
make  them,  and  live  under  them,  work  out 
their  own  salvation  and  the  salvation  of 
the  nation. 


Each  man  must  work  for  himself.  If 
he  cannot  support  himself,  he  will  be  but 
a  drag  on  all  mankind,  but  each  man  must 
work  for  the  common  good.  There  is  not 
a  man  here  who  does  not,  at  times,  need 
to  have  a  helping  hand  extended  to  him, 
and  shame  on  the  brother  who  will  not  ex- 
tend that  helping  hand. 

74 


STRENUOUS    EPIGRAMS 

The  citizen  that  counts,  the  man  that 
counts  in  our  life  is  the  man  who  endeav- 
ours not  to  shirk  difficulties,  but  to  meet 
and  overcome  them;  is  the  man  who  en- 
deavours not  to  lead  his  life  in  the  world's 
soft  places,  not  to  walk  easily  and  take 
his  comfort;  but  the  man  who  goes  out 
to  tread  the  rugged  ways  that  lead  to 
honour  and  success,  the  ways,  the  treading 
of  which  means  good  work  worthily  done. 


It  is  a  good  lesson  for  nations  and  in- 
dividuals to  learn  never  to  hit  if  it  can  be 
helped,  and  never  to  hit  soft. 


I  ask,  then,  that  all  of  us  approach  our 
duties  of  to-day  in  the  spirit  that  our 
fathers  have  shown  in  the  different  crises 
of  the  past,  that  we  approach  them,  real- 
izing that  nothing  can  take  the  place  of 

75 


STRENUOUS   EPIGRAMS 

the  ordinary,  every-day  performance  of 
duty,  that  we  need  the  virtues  which  do 
not  wait  for  heroic  times,  but  which  are 
exercised  day  in  and  day  out  in  the  ordi- 
nary work,  the  ordinary  duty  of  the  life 
domestic,  the  life  social,  the  life  in 
reference  to  the  State;  and  if  we  show 
those  qualities,  if  we  show  the  qualities 
that  make  for  good  citizenship,  for  de- 
cency and  civic  righteousness  in  ordinary 
times,  my  faith  is  firm  that  when  the  need 
for  the  heroic  efforts  arises,  our  people 
will,  in  the  future,  as  they  have  always 
done  in  the  past,  show  that  they  have  the 
capacity  for  heroic  work. 


76 


Remarque  Edition 


OF 


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SONNETS    FROM    THE    PORTUGUESE.      By 
Elizabeth  Barrett  Browning. 

In  the  "  Sonnets  from  the  Portuguese,"  a  most 
exquisite  series  of  love  poems,  we  have  Mrs.  Brown- 
ing at  her  best.  She  has  broken  away  from  that 
stiffness  and  artificiality  which  characterizes  her 
earlier  poems,  and  in  sentiment  and  lofty  rhyme 
is  at  times  truly  Shakespearian. 


VIRGINIBUS    PUERISQUE.     By    Robert    Louis 
Stevenson. 

Since,  unfortunately,  most  of  our  juvenile  liter- 
ature nowadays  is  the  work  of  "  hack "  writers, 
it  is  refreshing  to  find  a  work  for  boys  and  girls 
written  by  a  man  of  genius.  "  Virginibus  Puerisque  " 
stands  high  among  Mr.  Stevenson's  writings,  and  is 
enjoyed  by  both  old  and  young. 


FRIENDSHIP    AND    LOVE.     By   Ralph   Waldo 

Emerson. 

Mr.  Emerson  is  no  bookish  theorist.  He  does 
not  draw  his  conclusions  from  syllogisms,  but  from 
his  personal  observations  of  men  and  things.  The 
essays  on  Friendship  and  Love,  two  of  his  most 
human,  being  subjects  akin  to  each  other,  are  pub- 
lished together  as  a  single  volume. 


HEROISM  AND  CHARACTER.    By  Ralph  Waldo 

Emerson. 

As  Friendship  and  Love  are  linked,  so  Heroism 
and  Character  are  complementary.  In  fact,  we  per- 
ceive a  strong  connection  between  the  four  subjects. 
For  friendship  deepens  in  love,  and  from  love  for 
one's  neighbor,  one's  family,  one's  State,  comes 
heroism,  and  heroism  is  the  essential  element  of 
a  noble  character. 


POOR    RICHARD'S    ALMANAC.     By   Benjamin 

Franklin. 

A  selection  of  the  best  sayings  from  the  numerous 
issues  of  "  Poor  Richard."  Helpful  and  inspiring; 
the  work  of  a  most  practical  mind,  written  for  a 
most  practical  nation. 

THE  SCHOOL  FOR  SCANDAL.    By  Sheridan. 

Sheridan's  comedies  are  second  only  to  Shake- 
speare's. "  The  School  for  Scandal,"  undoubtedly 
his  masterpiece,  has  had  an  undiminished  popularity 
from  the  moment  it  was  published  to  the  present 
day. 

DESTRUCTION   OF   POMPEII.     By   Pliny  and 
Bulwer. 

Two  interesting  descriptions  of  the  Destruction 
of  Pompeii,  one  by  Pliny,  the  greatest  scientist 
of  the  ancient  world,  who  wrote  as  an  eye-witness; 
the  other  the  well-known  and  thrilling  account  from 
Lord  Lytton's  "  Last  Days  of  Pompeii." 

SIR    ROGER    DE    COVERLEY    PAPERS.     By 
Addison. 

The  famous  "  Sir  Roger  de  Coverley  Papers  "  are 
not  only  treasured  by  all  students  of  English  liter- 
ature, but  by  historians  as  well.  For  nowhere  do 
we  find  a  finer  description  of  English  life  in  the 
eighteenth  century  than  in  these  papers.  Further- 
more, in  the  character  of  Sir  Roger  we  find  the 
finest  delineation  in  English  literature  of  an  ideal 
gentleman. 

MILTON.    By  Lord  Macaulay. 

A  profound  and  masterly  essay  on  the  leader  of 
English  literature  of  the  seventeenth  century  by  the 
leading  literary  critic  of  the  nineteenth  century. 

3 


THOUGHTS  OF  MARCUS  AURELIUS.     Selec- 
tions. 

Marcus  Aurelius  was  the  purest  and  loftiest  of 
the  pagan  philosophers.  "  His  great  work,  '  The 
Thoughts,' "  says  Lecky,  "  not  only  forms  one  of 
the  most  impressive,  but  also  forms  one  of  the 
truest  books  in  the  whole  range  of  religious  liter- 
ature." 

LORD     CHESTERFIELD'S    LETTERS.      Selec- 
tions. 

These  letters  of  sound  counsel  and  practical  advice, 
addressed  to  his  son  Philip,  are  what  Lord  Chester- 
field's reputation  rests  upon,  and  it  is  through  these 
that  the  name  of  Chesterfield  has  become  symbolic 
of  culture  and  refinement. 

RUBAIYAT  OF  OMAR  KHAYYAM. 

The  "  Rubaiyat  of  Omar  Khayyam "  is  one  of 
the  greatest  contributions  that  the  East  has  given 
to  literature.  The  subtle  thought,  the  soft  Oriental 
imagery,  and  the  delicacy  of  the  poetry  will  appeal 
to  the  poetic  imagination  of  all  ages. 

ENOCH  ARDEN.     By  Alfred,  Lord  Tennyson. 

In  "  Enoch  Arden "  we  have  one  of  the  most 
beautiful  and  pathetic  poems  in  the  English  lan- 
guage. Had  Tennyson  never  written  another  line, 
he  would  have  gone  down  in  history  as  one  of  the 
greatest  poets  of  his  time. 

RIP    VAN    WINKLE,   and    THE    LEGEND    OF 
SLEEPY  HOLLOW.     By  Washington  Irving. 

These  immortal  stories  of  Dutch  life  in  colonial 
New  York  are  the  best  pieces  of  writing  that  Mr. 
Irving  contributed  to  literature.  The  pathos,  quaint- 
ness,  and  wit  are  impressed  upon  the  reader  in  a 
striking  way. 

4 


ROCHEFOUCAULD'S  MAXIMS. 

These  maxims,  written  by  a  cavalier  of  Richelieu's 
times,  one  who  knew  the  world  as  few  have  an 
opportunity  of  knowing  it,  are  witty,  subtle,  and 
true.  The  author  has  grasped  the  whole  of  life, 
and  weakness  of  human  nature,  of  fashion  and  con- 
ventionalities are  strongly  depicted. 

RAB  AND  HIS  FRIENDS.    By  Dr.  John  Brown. 

"  Rab  and  His  Friends,"  a  story  of  a  mastiff,  full 
of  beauty  and  pathos,  is,  in  its  line,  only  rivalled  by 
"  Black  Beauty."  In  this  volume  the  story  of  Mar- 
jorie  Fleming,  an  interesting  case  of  remarkable 
precociousness,  is  also  published. 

SHE  STOOPS  TO  CONQUER.    By  Oliver  Gold- 
smith. 

"  She  Stoops  to  Conquer  "  is  a  comedy  abounding 
in  the  keenest  wit  and  satire.  Human  nature  is 
depicted  by  a  masterly  observer,  and  the  characters 
of  the  play  are  true  to  life. 

OLD  CHRISTMAS.     By  Washington  Irving. 

An  ideal  picture  of  an  old-fashioned  Christmas 
in  rural  England.  The  good  old  customs,  and  the 
quaint  games  handed  down  from  generation  to 
generation,  are  pictured  in  a  most  interesting 
manner. 

LEAVES     OF     GRASS.      Selections.      By    Walt 

Whitman. 

Walt  Whitman  is  looked  upon  as  the  one  dis- 
tinctive American  poet,  the  product  of  our  New 
World  democracy.  Though  perhaps  lacking  in 
grace,  his  poems  are  inspired  by  his  enthusiasm  and 
humanitarianism,  and  in  every  line  the  reader  sees 
the  personality  of  the  poet,  —  noble,  generous,  and 
lofty,  —  a  great  man  in  the  highest  sense  of  the 
word. 


VISION  OF  SIR  LAUNFAL.     By  James  Russell 
Lowell. 

This  great  poem  is  drawn  from  the  famous  ro- 
mance of  King  Arthur  and  the  Holy  Grail,  a  theme 
which  has  furnished  inspiration  to  so  many  great 
minds.  The  "  Vision  of  Sir  Launfal "  is  the  best 
of  Lowell's  shorter  poems. 

ELEGY  AND  OTHER  POEMS.    By  Thomas  Gray. 

The  "  Elegy  in  a  Country  Churchyard  "  occupies 
as  secure  a  place  among  English  classics  as  "  Ham- 
let "  or  "  Paradise  Lost,"  but  some  readers  may  not 
realize  that  several  other  poems  by  Gray  are  equally 
perfect  and  impressive.  This  collection  contains  all 
of  Gray's  verse  which  is  really  worth  knowing. 

SWEETNESS  AND  LIGHT.    By  Matthew  Arnold. 

An  epoch-making  essay,  by  one  of  the  most  cul- 
tured, practical,  and  inspiring  minds  of  our  century. 
Arnold's  simplicity  and  charm  of  style,  no  less  than 
his  weighty  message,  have  already  given  him  an 
assured  place  among  classic  writers. 

GOLDEN  THOUGHTS.  By  Archbishop  Fenelon. 
Judiciously  made  extracts  from  the  letters  of  the 
great  archbishop.  Fenelon  united  in  his  personality 
the  sweetness  of  the  saint  with  the  strength  of  the 
reformer,  and  his  personal  correspondence  contains 
the  very  heart  and  soul  of  religious  devotion. 

WIT  AND  WISDOM.    By  Sidney  Smith. 

Extracts  from  Smith's  writing  and  conversations, 
which  flash  with  repartee,  good-tempered  satire,  and 
brilliant  strokes  of  wit,  and  are  characterized 
throughout  by  shrewd,  irresistible  common  sense. 
The  comments  on  America  and  Americans  are  alone 
worth  the  price  of  the  little  book. 
6 


A  CHRISTMAS  CAROL.    By  Charles  Dickens. 

This  familiar  story  possesses  perennial  interest 
for  young  and  old,  and  it  never  has  been  presented 
in  more  attractive  form.  Whether  regarded  as  a 
ghost  story,  a  character  study,  or  a  parable,  the 
"  Christmas  Carol "  is  one  of  the  most  brilliant  and 
absorbing  tales  in  English  literature. 

WILL    O'   THE   MILL   AND    BIOGRAPHICAL 

SKETCH.    By  R.  L.  Stevenson. 

This  little  parable  of  a  life  contains  a  wonderful 
moral,  and  is  also  an  irresistibly  fascinating  story 
in  itself,  written  in  the  most  exquisite  English.  Many 
critics  think  it  Stevenson's  masterpiece.  It  is  pref- 
aced by  a  careful  and  adequate  biographical  sketch. 

NAPOLEON  ADDRESSES  AND  ANECDOTES. 

Napoleon  was  not  only  a  consummate  genius  as 
general  and  ruler,  he  was  also  a  man  of  extraor- 
dinary personality.  So  much  of  his  magnetism  and 
personal  charm  is  preserved  in  these  anecdotes  and 
speeches,  that  we  become  completely  en  rapport  with 
the  great  emperor,  and  cannot  fail  to  share  the 
enthusiasm  of  his  contemporaries.  The  selections 
were  made  with  greatest  care  especially  for  this 
edition. 

SOME  FRUITS  OF  SOLITUDE.  REFLEC- 
TIONS AND  MAXIMS.  By  William  Penn. 
"To  quote  a  book  like  this  were  impossible;  at 
least  one  can  hand  it  on,  with  a  wrench,  one  to 
another.  Some  of  the  '  Fruits  '  are  sounder,  jucier, 
and  grown  against  a  sunnier  wall  of  experience  than 
others,  but  all  are  delicate,  and  the  little  basket 
which  holds  them  will  be  found  in  all  times  and 
places  a  peaceful  and  sweet  companion."  —  Robert 
Louis  Stevenson. 


MEN  AND  WOMEN.    By  Robert  Browning. 

Browning  is  known  the  world  over  for  his  deep- 
veined  humanity  and  rare  faculty  of  dramatic  repre- 
sentation. These  poems  have  as  much  red  blood 
in  them  as  the  dramas  of  Shakespeare.  The  present 
volume  contains  all  the  principal  favorites  which 
have  sung  themselves  into  the  memory  of  every 
reader  who  loves  vigorous,  manly  poetry. 

PASSION  IN  THE  DESERT,  AND  AN  EPISODE 
IN  THE  REIGN  OF  TERROR.  Selected  Prose 
Works  of  Honore  de  Balzac. 

Balzac  is  thought  by  many  competent  authorities 
to  be  the  greatest  novelist  of  the  world.  His  short 
stories  are  quite  as  remarkable  in  their  way  as  his 
longer  stories,  and  the  very  best  of  them  are  to  be 
found  in  the  present  collection. 

POEMS  OF  SENTIMENT.    By  Byron. 

Probably  no  poet  in  the  English-speaking  world 
has  ever  held  as  high  and  well  recognized  a  position 
as  a  "  sentimentalist "  as  George  Gordon,  Lord 
Byron.  His  master  lyrics  dealing  with  the  subject 
of  love,  consisting  principally  of  his  shorter  poems, 
have  been  selected  and  edited  with  the  greatest  care 
for  this  edition. 

LETTERS  TO  A  YOUNG  MAN  ABOUT  TOWN. 
By  William  Makepeace  Thackeray. 

These  charming  but  comparatively  little  known 
essays  originally  appeared  in  Punch,  and  have  been 
reissued  in  a  volume  by  themselves  but  once,  and 
then  in  a  privately  printed  book  now  extremely  rare, 
until  the  present  edition.  In  his  humorous  and  satiri- 
cal manner,  Thackeray  shows  up  the  follies  and 
life  of  a  young  man  about  town  in  the  middle  of  the 
nineteenth  century. 


GOLDEN  WINGS.    A  Prose  Romance  and  a  Poem. 

By  William  Morris. 

Two  early  productions  of  Morris's  with  the  same 
title.  The  Prose  Romance,  written  in  1856  while  still 
a  student  at  Oxford,  and  the  Poem  two  years  later, 
both  of  which  show  the  irresistible  and  quaint  charm 
apparent  in  all  the  later  writings  of  this  architect, 
painter,  designer,  craftsman,  socialist  and  author,  — 
who,  on  the  death  of  Tennyson,  was  thought  by  many 
would  be  the  next  Poet  Laureate. 

SELECTED  POEMS.    By  John  Boyle  O'Reilly. 

Through  several  causes,  but  not  lack  of  merit,  Boyle 
O'Reilly  is  fast  becoming  merely  a  name  to  the  genera- 
tion of  to-day.  Therefore,  pains  have  here  been  taken 
to  perpetuate  the  choicest  productions  of  his  pen, — 
poems  worthy  of  rank  with  the  masterpieces  of  Eng- 
lish literature.  The  volume  is  prefaced  with  an  inter- 
esting personal  sketch  of  O'Reilly,  by  Mr.  William  A. 
Hovey. 

THE  DISCOURSES  OF  EPICTETUS.   Selections. 

In  Sir  John  Lubbock's  "  List  of  the  One  Hundred 
Best  Books,"  the  Bible  is  first,  the  "  Thoughts  of  Marcus 
Aurelius "  second,  and  "  Epictetus "  third.  The  dis- 
courses here  given  have  been  carefully  selected,  and  in 
each  case  the  English  revised  with  utmost  care. 

EVANGELINE.      By    Henry    Wadsworth    Long- 
fellow. 

The  purity,  sweetness  and  refinement  with  which 
Longfellow  delineates  the  affections  of  the  heart  make 
his  poetry  the  most  welcome  of  visitants  at  the  domestic 
fireside,  and  of  all  his  poems,  "  Evangeline  "  is  probably 
the  most  popular. 

THE  HOLY  GRAIL.    By  Alfred,  Lord  Tennyson. 

This   idyl,  which  must  rank  as  one  of  the  greatest 

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of  Tennyson's  poetical  achievements,  came  to  him 
suddenly,  "  as  if  by  a  breath  of  inspiration."  Of  it  the 
poet  said,  "I  feared  for  years  to  touch  the  subject  of 
the  Holy  Grail,  and  when  I  began,  finished  it  in  a  fort- 
night." 

Further  titles  in  preparation. 


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